Posts tagged as “We Call It Living”

[retro twenty twenty six day six]: iterative improvement

Published January 7, 2026 by centaur

Sandi and I talked a good bit about how to improve my Lebanese pickled hot peppers. I have been having 1-2 of them, plus one of the grape-leaf toppings, with our squash+mujuddara meals for the past few nights. The hotness is OK, but the flavor could be better, but the real problem is the texture: the first few peppers were too crunchy, which itself isn't at all a bad thing, except it wasn't what I was trying to recreate.

Dad's hot peppers (well, probably Mom's hot peppers, but made to Dad's exacting but poorly-articulated specifications and executed with Mom visiting Aunt Nagla, Aunt Kitty or Aunt Theresa to get the skinny on the recipe, because that was how they all rolled) were hot but not too hot, soft but not squishy with a little but of crunchy, vinegary from their brine; and well-preserved enough to be stored in the kitchen cabinet.

I have been in the hospital from food poisoning too many times to put anything in the fucking kitchen cabinet, no matter how well preserved. For those not in the know, I have been in the hospital at least twice, and probably three times, with food poisoning so severe that I became dehydrated enough to require a saline IV. And I realized that the common factor in every triggering event was getting a bit of food that was slightly off in some way, and eating it thinking, "Naaah, it will be fine."

Yes, food that tastes weird may just be food that tastes weird, but after the third such incident, I deployed one of my Rules(TM) to put a stop to that. My Rules(TM) are things I use to prevent me from going down a path which might get me into serious trouble down the road. Some of my Rules(TM) include: never gamble for money (with exceptions for <$20 dollars in a slot machine if waiting around while friends are gambling at a casino), a one drink per day limit (with a rare second drink several hours later, such as a nightcap if the drink wasn't strong, a late evening cocktail after a margarita at an early lunch, or a drink in a circumstance when you know you're not driving, such as a plane flight or a hotel bar after a long plane flight). And another Rule(TM) is "If anything seems off with some food, don't fucking eat it, full stop --- literally no exceptions."

So my pickled hot peppers go in the fridge, and that leads to the first potential diagnosis of the crunchiness problem: rather than 1-2 months pickling in the cabinet, maybe they need 3-5 months pickling in the fridge. Another might be letting them dehydrate more; Dad's pickled hot peppers were pretty soft, and Sandi's mom Dottie suggested letting the peppers dry out longer. Using Sandi's dehydrator or mild roasting might achieve the same effect of drying the peppers out so they'd absorb more brine and making them softer.

Also, I think I'd radically up the spice in the brine, adding more turmeric and garlic and coriander seeds, which seem to have been a whole net positive on the appearance and flavor of the hot pepper mix. It's entirely possible that dehydrating / drying out / roasting, jazzing up the brine, and perhaps going full non-refrigerated canning ritual with boiling rather than salt/vinegar fridge canning with mere jar sterilization, would yield better results.

But all of this, note, is unscientific; or, more properly, is what classic thinkers would have called science and modern thinkers would have called art: examining a situation, rationally analyzing it, and then applying the results of that rational analysis to suggest a next alternative. That procedure sounds great, and it sure suckered the Greeks, but it's total bullshit. In real life, you do not fucking know whether the ideas you have extracted from past events will apply in future circumstances, and the only fucking solution is to simply try them, record the results, and attempt to generalize over many instances, hoping that what you think you have learned is not an artifact of random noise.

That's depressing, in general, and doubly depressing for professional scientists. Most of the questions we want to answer in our daily lives are not amenable to the methods of science because the events in question happen too rarely to get statistically reliably conclusions (and before you protest that you are actually "scientifically" testing your ideas, let me point out that you need roughly 30 trials in each major bucket of analysis, good or bad, to have statistically reliable results, and I can virtually guarantee you're not conducting 30-1000 trials for most of the things you think you have learned in the course of your life).

No, we instead rely on our innate learning: the gut that Jim Kirk relied on, Spock mocked, and McCoy understood the wisdom of. We've got three point five billion years of evolution underlying our learning systems, so when humans learn things, the results of our learning aren't bad.

But a rule of thumb is not validated knowledge.

The only solution is to have humility, accept that we can be wrong, and to try, try, try again.

So I'm going to keep canning Lebanese pickled peppers until I get it right, is what I'm saying.

-the Centaur

Pictured: the pickled peppers, in their intended deployment at a meal.

[twenty twenty six day five]: veganize me

Published January 6, 2026 by centaur

I am unlikely to become a vegan, but I do enjoy vegan food, and one special time for vegans is the winter, in which many wonderful squash are available for vegan dishes. My wife has developed a wonderful "formula" for vegan dinners which involves a squash (today, spaghetti squash), a filling (today I think mujudara, a rice and lentil Lebanese dish she picked up from me and ran with), a topping (mushroom jerky and mushroom marinara sauce) and some kind of bread or pasta (today, vegan sourdough from Whole Foods).

An assist on today's meal are some Lebanese pickled hot peppers that I made which are ... okay. The recipe I used said they'd be ready in about a month, but these are one and a half months old and they're not too pickled so far. Flavor is fine, not too exciting, but the ones my mom and dad made were always a bit more pickled and soft, whereas these are still crunchy. I'd probably research whatever it is that makes them more soft and do more of that, and probably up the amount of spices (turmeric and garlic and more) in the mix.

But! A perfectly good meal.

Today's challenges included blogging (yasss, this post), drawing (1 drawing), writing (~1900 words on Tales of the Spookymurk), working on a scientific paper (on prosocial robotics), and some reading.

Also in today's news, America seems to be grasping at starting a Western Hemisphere empire, and to justify it, Stephen Miller demonstrated his lack of grasp of basic history:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/us/politics/stephen-miller-greenland-venezuela.html

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Real cute, Steveo, but ignorant. Since you're interested in the beginning of history - I know you said time, but I'm just going to interpolate what you really meant there, since it isn't coherent enough to be parsed on its own merits - you might look up the chaps Hitler, Napoleon and Alexander. The iron law of the world is that setting the whole world against you never goes well, and even if things seem to be looking up for you for a bit, an empire put together by pure force will fall apart as soon as it slips from a tyrant's dead fingers.

Realpolitik is neither real nor politic - it's a childish emotional response to situations which is directly contradicted by readily available facts. I'm prepared to justify that in depth, but then, the proponents of realpolitik generally don't know what it actually meant and are simply grasping at a word to justify their emotional desire to do something harmful and stupid that feels good to them, rather than, say, looking at what the actual consequences of pulling that bullshit on counter-acting actors generally turns out to be.

-the Centaur

Pictured: dinner with Sandi, and the pickled peppers when I bottled them.

[twenty twenty six day four]: time to crash

Published January 4, 2026 by centaur

Okay, today's post was going to be a post about friends and family and the value of organizing dinners.

Instead, I'd like to blog that it's late, and I'm tired.

Our five cats have not been getting along of late, and so we've separated the newest addition from the O.G.'s (the Original Girls, who actually aren't the original gangsters at all, but are the new(ish) kittens picking on the new(est) kitten). So, I was up super late socializing them yesterday, and am real damn tired today.

So please enjoy this picture of late-night pound cake and milk. Goodnight.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Pound cake, vanilla almond milk, and Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning, a fantastic, highly mathematical tour of machine, deep and Bayesian learning, my latest evening read.

[twenty twenty six day three]: drawing every day

Published January 4, 2026 by centaur

Similarly to Blogging Every Day, my Drawing Every Day project is a challenge to complete a single practice drawing every day in a year. I got inspired to do this after learning that Jim Lee, an artist I greatly admire and current Chief Creative Officer at DC Comics, took off a whole year after college to re-learn to draw instead of diving right into medical school. He set up a drafting table near his bed and drew 8 to 10 hours a day.

Now, I couldn't do that when I started Drawing Every Day back in 2021, as I was a roboticist at Google working to bank up savings for me and my wife's retirement. But I could commit to doing at least one practice drawing, as I was already experienced at doing writing challenges like this blog and National Novel Writing Month. My notes say I got at least 215 days in to Drawing Every Day in 2021.

But I seem to have skipped it entirely in 2022, and couldn't pick it up again in 2023 due to the Google layoffs and me scrambling to finish the papers we had in flight and to get contract work. Only in 2024 did I start the project again, this time, getting at least 135 days into it (I say at least, since I may have drawings in a notebook that I did not yet scan for my records).

2025 was the year that I really buckled down and won it. Here are the rules that I followed:

The challenge starts in a calendar year.
The goal is to produce one practice drawing for every day in the year.
You can draw ahead as far as you have to to make sure you don't fall behind.
Ideally, your buffer should be at least a month, a week, and two days.
Drawings should be complex enough to take at least 10 minutes.
Any drawing you finish, in any medium, can count towards Drawing Every Day.
Conversely, don't pick a topic for Drawing Every Day too complex for a full 3 hour practice session.
"Retro" posts for missed days OR YEARS are allowed.
Success is doing a drawing for every day in a year before the year is over.
Completion is doing a drawing for every day in a year, regardless of when it is drawn.

But there's more than that. There's one other trick: carry a portable drawing kit everywhere. So now, in the grey Google backpack that has my "portable office", I always carry a notebook, a small book of art instruction I can draw from, and a roll of sketching pencils, sharpeners, and erasers, and Micron pens.

With this, generally, I can allocate between 30 minutes and 3 hours to drawing on most days, but not every day. (For example, a day that you're sick, or flying or traveling, or the big friends and family Christmas party, are all days in which near zero drawing gets done). So building up a buffer is essential to finishing a year.

And once you've allowed building up a buffer, you can do more than that. The point is not to do a streak of consecutive days drawing; the point is having done one drawing for every day in the year - or, more precisely, doing a given amount of drawing practice in a year.

So first I started allowing myself "retro" posts when I got behind - originally, just for posting on this blog. But I decided it was more important to do the drawings than to blog them, and I focused then on building that buffer. Then blowing past the buffer. And finally, about October, blowing past the end of the year.

At that point, more than two months ahead, I had a choice: keep going until I finished my drawings for the year ... or start backfilling previous years. I picked the latter, allocating roughly two drawings to the future and one drawing to the past. This ensured that even if I lost a day, I'd still keep moving ahead.

I then blew past the end of 2025, and decided, rather than coast through the end of the year, I would just keep going. At this point, I'm over 90 days into 2026's drawings, and have around 120 to finish for 2024's. So as far as keeping the discipline up, I am feeling pretty good about this project.

Which is good, because around August to September, I wanted to give up.

After having spent much of 2024 and much of 2025 working on Drawing Every Day, not to mention the previous years, I started to feel my drawing wasn't improving. Frankly speaking, I wanted to quit, and seriously considered quitting as I was getting really busy around Dragon Con time.

But, I kept telling myself: you've been laid off. Your major consulting contract has come to a close. And you have time to write your novels. If you don't put in the time and the hours now, you'll never become a comic book artist, and the comic books that you want to write and draw will never be completed.

So I committed to finishing 2025. And as I did that work, I started, very slowly, to notice incremental improvements in my drawings. Feet were not quite as terrible. Hands were not quite as impossible. And the shape of the human body started to feel a little bit less like unknown territory and a little bit more mapped.

Frankly speaking, I don't ever think I'm going to be a "great artist". As I understand it, individual differences in innate talent can account for more than a tenfold difference in quantity and quality on many cognitive tasks, and I think I have been blessed with a great artistic interest but not as great an artistic aptitude.

But the bulk of the quality of any individual's performance is not related to their innate talent, but instead into their learned skill. The so-called "ten thousand hours of practice" needed to become an expert is a very real thing, and almost every expert has put in a similar number of hours to end up where they are.

At ~30 minutes to 1 hour for a drawing, I'm getting roughly 200 hours of practice in a full year, with about 500 hours under my belt in the Drawing Every Day project. For contrast, Kimon Nicolaїdes's The Natural Way to Draw course of practice is about 900 hours of practice, and if Jim Lee did 10 hours a day, 5 days a week for 50 days in his gap year, that would be 2500 hours of practice. Clearly, I have a long way to go.

But I could do it, in a year. Nothing stopped me - not friends or family, writing or research, consulting or even a full-time job, counting the 2/3 of a year I finished in 2021. In fact, I think with the principles of practice I've developed for Drawing Every Day at least a month ahead, I would have easily finished 2021.

And I enjoy it.

So nothing is stopping me from Drawing Every Day for the next ten years if I want to. And if I keep it up, the one day I'll find, ten years have got behind me ... and 3650 completed drawings will be under my belt, for something like 2000 hours of practice. I'm guessing comic book projects will be easier then.

Not that anything's stopping me from drawing more, or starting comics sooner. I started Drawing Every Day to help rebuild my confidence in drawing, which collapsed after I broke my arm in a karate match in late 2004 (I think November 30th, if I've done the math right) and my laptop was stolen and the replacement laptop could no longer run my webcomic software. I've tried to resurrect my drawing career before - most notably in that post from 2014, a decade after the break, but it didn't take - because I was out of practice.

Now, God willing, whenever I do pull the trigger on my comic projects, I hope practice won't be the problem.

-the Centaur

Pictured: My portable drawing kit, and "the break".

[twenty twenty-six day two]: what i call blogging every day

Published January 2, 2026 by centaur

What is Blogging Every Day? Well, that seems simple enough, right? If you blog every day, then you blog every day. Bloggers like John Scalzi at Whatever and Caitlin R. Kiernan at Dear Sweet Filthy World pop out a blog post almost every day, so, that would count, right?

Well, no, because they're blogging machines, and I'm not. If they happen to blog every day, then it's because protons haven't decayed. If I happen to blog every day, then that's damn dumb luck that there were a few days in a row that I blogged. That's just "happening to blog on consecutive days".

No, what I mean is taking on the challenge of producing a blog post for every day of the year.

I've had great luck with challenges in my creative career - 24 Hour Comic Day (draw 24 pages in 24 hours), the 48 Hour Film Project (shoot a film in 48 hours), Script Frenzy (to produce 100 pages of script in a month), to the granddaddy of them all, National Novel Writing Month (write 50,000 words of a new novel in one month, a challenge at which I have succeeded at forty-plus times).

So I've invented my own challenges. Drawing Every Day was initially difficult, but I succeeded at it last year for the first time - more on that tomorrow. Writing Every Day also is scattershot, as is Coding Every Week. Music (Practice) Every Day is deliberately getting sacrificed for the writing and drawing. And Social Media Every Week makes me break out into hives, which we're having some success treating with cat therapy.

As for Blogging Every Day, here's the rules of this challenge:

The challenge starts in a calendar year (say, twenty twenty six).
The goal is to produce one post for every day in that year.
You can schedule posts ahead to deal with obligations.
To count, the post must be intended for that day.
"Retro" posts for missed days are allowed.
Success is scheduling a post for every day in the year within the year.
Completion is writing a post for every day in a year, regardless of when it is written.

"To count, the post must be intended for that day" needs a little explanation. If you've not been blogging, and something happens - like a family party you want to share, or a movie you want to review, or someone being wrong on the Internet - then that motivated post doesn't count as blogging every day. If you are blogging every day, then all topics are fair game - but don't count posts that weren't taken on as part of the challenge, because then you're back to depending on luck, or proton decay.

"Retro" posts and "Completion" also deserve a statement. For my Drawing Every Day project, I draw far ahead - about 80+ days right now for 2026 - since I know my drawing is "bursty". But I can pretty much similarly guarantee I'll miss a post at, say, Dragon Con. So you can "backfill" and have it count - as in my Drawing Every Day project, where I have now started backfilling 2024's missing drawings (I have about 120 drawings left to finish for 2024).

This is different than, say, Vandy Beth Glenn's approach to Running Every Day. At one point her "running every day" streak had gotten insanely large, like over 1,000, and someone asked her: "Do you ever miss a day?" Her response: "No, because I would not have been running for every day."

That's great, but I'm not trying to create a streak of consecutive blogging: I'm trying to create a collection of blog posts for every day of the year. So I will blog, schedule posts, blog ahead, backfill, retro, whatever to put myself in the habit of making sure I've blogged every day.

And what I've found with the Drawing Every Day project is that that discipline - treating it as a collection that I am trying to fill, rather than a streak I'm trying to achieve - has enabled me to build up a buffer and build up my drawing muscles and get my regular practice going.

Here's to that for Blogging Every Day 2026 ... Day Two!

-the Centaur

Pictured: Loki, helping me blog.

[twenty twenty six day one] happy new year!

Published January 2, 2026 by centaur

So! 2025 was a hell of a year, wasn't it? Seems like a lot of them have been that way for the world since ... oh, I don't know, 2016 ... and for me personally since roughly 2019. Mom's death, major work disruptions, Covid, a bit of a sunny spot in 2022 when LLMs hit robotics (roughly a year before ChatGPT went live!), the layoffs in 2023, and the whole chaotic mess of the elections in 2024 and the authoritarian takeover of the US in 2025.

But, we made it. The pandemic seems gone and is not coming back. Trump hasn't gotten away with everything he wanted to, and every once in a blue moon he does something not entirely stupid. And our great big party this year didn't have a huge blowup like the last four years, but was a great success!

We accomplished this by reaching out to everybody and involving them in the party planning individually, rather than sending a huge email blast and hoping, and then engaging people when they arrived. It worked surprisingly well! We even had - gasp - civil political discourse! And a fire alarm, but, that was unrelated.

Over 2025, I didn't keep up with blogging every day like I wanted to, but I pretty much nailed writing, getting about 200,000 words of rough draft written, plus a scientific paper; and as for drawing every day, I'm almost 90 days ahead for 2026 already. So I hope to start posting those soon as part of this blog.

More news to share later, but for now ... Happy New Year!

May yours not be all bad.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Me and Sandi at a dinner with her mother a few days ago, then from a nearby Barnes and Noble over dinner; and two pictures from our "Edgemas" party, now in something like its 35th year depending on how you count (34 years since we called it Edgemas, 37 years since our first holiday party).

Merry (Belated) Christmas!

Published December 26, 2025 by centaur

SO! Not a lot of blogging recently, because I've been focused on spending time with friends and family (or cleaning the house in preparation for spending time with friends and family) and, beyond that, I have a scientific paper due the fifteenth, PLUS I'm continuing to work on LEGACY OF THE EXTRA CREDIT PROJECT and am behind on my wordcount (I never seem to get a Nano-like challenge done in one of the non-Nano months, but, hey, there's a first time for everything, and I'm not THAT far behind).

So! In lieu of a long blog post, enjoy this festive tree, which I had set up elsewhere in the house as a permanent accent slash night light years ago, but which my wife snuck up to our bedroom closet and loaded with gifts while I slept in the night ... because, while she's not into Christmas, she knows I am.

Let's celebrate joyfully to thank God for Jesus, or as they say in the secular world ... Merry Christmas!

-the Centaur

Pictured: Our little Charlie Brown tree, and my wife with a surprise present.

[twenty-twenty five day three four one]: socialize me bro

Published December 8, 2025 by centaur

Pictured is Lovi, the newest of our cats, a stray from San Jose which Sandi started feeding, then befriended, then adopted once she'd become dependent. Everything was going fine with Lovi even after the move, until she was introduced to the other cats. Loki did a double take when he saw her, but the kittens were more freaked out, and have gradually become more and more aggressive with her. Lovi started peeing on stuff, and I eventually deduced that the kittens were likely keeping Lovi from the litterboxes.

We separated them, and everyone calmed down. Apparently this backsliding is a thing that can happen when introducing cats, and you need to be willing to do a reset. But, despite the calming down, it took a week or so for Lovi to start warming back up again. She used to hop up on Sandi's lap, but quit that when she was introduced to the kittens. She refused to do that for me, and Sandi realized that the blanket we had on the chair where I read in the bedroom likely smelled of kitten. I replaced that cover with a new blanket, and within the day Lovi had hopped up on it and started making biscuits and rubbing on my hand.

So, mission accomplished. Here's hoping it lasts!

-the Centaur

Pictured: the new cat, on the new blanket, newly making biscuits.

[retro twenty twenty-five day three four oh]: go easy on yourself

Published December 8, 2025 by centaur

Some days you just don't feel right. Other days you realize, you're not actually well.

So I found out late Friday that I've actually been sick - congestion, sore throat, and headaches kicked in pretty bad, followed by some pretty serious gastrointestinal upset most of the day Saturday. And, if I'm honest with myself, I haven't felt great since Thanksgiving, when I also thought I might have been coming down with something and then decided that I had fought it off. More or less likely I have been fighting it off the whole time, and was simply not paying close enough attention to my body.

Depressingly, I'm wont to do that.

So I took it easy Saturday afternoon once I knew what was going on, cutting back on my errands and trying to give my body a chance to relax. I did the same thing the next morning (breaking the illusion of the retro blogging, I know) and slept in rather than go to church. By the midafternoon, I was feeling better.

Sometimes you need to go easy on yourself, but it also requires paying attention to what your body needs.

-the Centaur

Pictured: A pair of tomato sandwiches I made at home, which itself was taking a break from my normal Saturday hit-Panera-then-run-errands routine.

[retro twenty twenty five day three three nine]: change it up

Published December 8, 2025 by centaur

Missed a couple days blogging because of a good day writing (plus another reason which wasn't apparent at the time). But, looking retro at those past few days, one thing I do notice is that you sometimes need to change it up. At Monterrey by the Mall, my favorite dish, by far, is the fish tacos (which is generally one of my favorite meals anywhere). But, in the cold snap we've been having in Greenville this early December, it was surprisingly good to have the hot chicken soup instead, with some quesabirria as a chaser. Sometimes, if you're a person who's prone to ruts, you need to push yourself outside your comfort zone. Even if you don't find your new favorite, you may find something to keep yourself warm a cold winter night.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Chicken soup and my evening reading pile at Monterrey by the Mall's high-top tables in the bar.

[twenty twenty five day three three eight]: the three drawing rule

Published December 4, 2025 by centaur

So I'm actually doing well on the "drawing every day" project, but am deliberately holding off resuming those posts until I'm convinced the "blogging every day" project is running solidly again. But one interesting trick from "drawing every day" is another rule of three: the three drawing rule.

My actual rules for "drawing every day" are a topic for another day (as I'm trying to mentally categorize them myself) but the main point is, it isn't a challenge, an attempt to create an unbroken streak of days drawing; it's an exercise, an attempt to enforce a total amount of practice drawing in a year.

Since I can't always sit down for the 30 minutes to 3 hours needed to do the drawings, what I've started doing is the "three drawing rule": try to do at least three drawings in a session. If I miss a day or two, then the three drawing rule keeps me on track, so I'm still doing roughly a drawing a day.

The bonus is, if I am getting my drawing time in every day, I have bonus drawings that I can accrue to one of the other years. I already tanked all my drawings for 2025, and so now I'm drawing a head into 2026 (about 70+ drawings) and backfilling 2024 (about ~120 drawings from the end).

And, strangely enough, I am actually seeing small signs of improvement. I can still see a lot of room for improvement, of course, and I don't have the nimbleness nor facility that I want.

But things are, slowly, getting better.

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Drawing at Carmella's Cafe and Dessert Bar, a late-night coffee joint which I visited after going to Hall's Chophouse for my traditional after-Nano celebration / planning-next-steps dinner.

[twenty twenty five day three thirty seven]: non-ironic vegan food

Published December 3, 2025 by centaur

So, I'm a carnivore married to a vegan, but there are vegan foods that I like - my wife makes a mean stuffed squash dish, and I genuinely look forward to winter squash season where we get this parade of different squash and different stuffings with great side vegetables for several weeks. And the two-black-bean-enchilada "La Vegetarian" plate at La Parilla Mexican Restaurant, when served vegan style plus a side of mushrooms, with the mushrooms and lettuce dumped on top, is one of the best things on the menu.

But then there's vegan food that I would "non-ironically" make. Vegan food not to eat because it's vegan, but because it is genuinely delicious on its own. The canonical example, is of course, tabbouleh, which is the national salad of Lebanon; it's one of my favorite dishes, vegan or not. Vegan baklava, made with vegan butter, is another example: ever since I started making it, I have preferred it, as the vegan variant is lighter, fluffier, flakier and tastier than its traditional counterpart.

But another one, surprisingly, is vegan kibbey nayye, a raw steak tartare dish which is the national meat dish of Lebanon. I will never knock Cousin Jay's traditional kibbey nayye, which is every bit the equal of his mother Aunt Theresa's or my mother's kibbey nayye; both of them made excellent kibbey, and Jay has risen to the challenge of taking the banner in the next generation. You can see Jay's kibbey, both cooked and raw (nayye) from last Saturday's pan-family Thanksgiving dinner, below:

Traditional cooked kibbey squares and kibbey nayye hand balls.

Now, you'd be surprised, but kibbey nayye made from Beyond Beef is every bit as good as regular kibbey - so much so that I keep a pack or two of Beyond in the freezer just so I can make vegan kibbey nayye on any occasion. The recipe is dead simple: thaw out one packet of Beyond Beef in the fridge, wash one cup of fine bulghur wheat three times, soak with a fingersbreadth of water until absorbed, and drain; grate one large white onion and drain (since the onion juice will overpower the mix), and mix the meat, onion and bulghur wheat together until very thoroughly mixed. Spice with a good bit of salt and pepper, a lesser amount of cumin and cinnamon, and a small amount of allspice (but NO NUTMEG, according to my recipe book), and adjust the mix to taste. Serve in a small mound with a cross cut in it, add a little olive oil, and eat with bread.

Vegan kibbey nayye in a round mound on a round plate, with a cross indented in its surface.

To the kibbey nayye connoisseur, the visible texture and the color (yes, the color, even to my partially color-blind eyes) of vegan kibbey nayye is not quite as great as the original. But the texture to the palate is good and the flavor is great. I am not trying to toot my own horn here, since vegan kibbey nayye might be an acquired taste, but this last time I made it (just yesterday) it came out as best as it ever had.

So I will keep one or two packs of Beyond Beef in the freezer (two, generally, so in case you forget to run to the store or they're out, you always have that back up copy) just waiting for me to thaw it, run to the store, grab a big white onion, and pull out the grater to have a great vegan-style Lebanese meal.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Vegan kibbey nayye, traditional cooked and raw kibbey, the traditional "plate with a cross in it" style of presentation, and then kibbey nayye with pita bread (shh, actually tortillas, but that's what I happened to have on hand that day).

[twenty twenty five day three thirty six]: the three cat rule

Published December 3, 2025 by centaur

So there's this rule I've developed to deal with cat food. If one cat doesn't eat some food that you just put down, that doesn't really mean anything: cats are finicky. If two cats don't eat some food that you just put down, that doesn't necessarily mean anything: it could be coincidence. But if three cats in a row don't eat some food that you just put down, it probably means the food is bad and you should toss it.

The food was bad. The replacement food was a hit.

-the Centaur

Pictured: food that three cats refused, and one of those three cats chowing down on its replacement.

[twenty twenty five day three thirty five]: if i can see it, you know it’s red

Published December 1, 2025 by centaur

Seen on bushes opposite my office, when trying to coax our at Loki to either go outside or go take a nap. I'm partially red-green color-blind, so something has to be *really* red for it to stand out to me as red. Once a psychophysicist told me that, since I had three detectors like everyone else, that my vision wasn't really deficient; my color axes were just skewed from everyone else's. But that doesn't take into account the overlap of my red-green detectors, which means there are many instances of color that I can discriminate, but don't really notice. I ... suppose that would disadvantage me if I had to forage for food in the wild rather than at Whole Foods, as I do believe the berries that I would notice would likely be toxic.

I noticed these. And - just going out on a limb here - I think these berries are, very probably, very red.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Green bushes with red winter berries, which Google Lens thinks is heavenly bamboo, a bush with berries supposedly toxic to birds which, given the somewhat consistent theme of the landscaping of the house (pretty-but-toxic-useless-or-labor-intensive), does not surprise me.

getting back to it …

Published October 20, 2025 by centaur

So I frequently stack too many projects on top of me to adequately attack all of them - perhaps this might be a consequence of me running upwards of two hundred projects at a time, but who can say - and the consequence of that is, some tasks that aren't so important get the short end of the stick. For example, blogging (as you may have noticed) or going through bills (which pile and pile and pile until I doze them).

But this year, my drawing every day project has NOT been getting the short end of the stick.

I want to talk about it more later, but I've kept up a great buffer, and am well ahead of the game for 2025. So far ahead that I've started doing more complex drawings, rather than just the drawing exercises. Above, I'm redrawing one of my sketches for the Instant Book "An Original Use of Magic" for Thinking Ink Press. Frankly speaking, I'm not a great artist. But I have learned a trick for producing art better than I'm normally capable of: I redraw my own artwork over and over again until I get it right. I think it is progressing quite well.

I still have a long way to go. But I can see that I'm starting to make progress.

-the Centaur

Pictured: My portable drawing setup, which I carry with me almost everywhere I go, to facilitate the "Drawing Every Day" project.

the protest went well …

Published October 19, 2025 by centaur

... and we had a nice afternoon visiting family and nice evening relaxing afterward. But despite the fact that it worked out well for us, it's important to take some time out to share that news with your friends and family, because political action, as important as it is, can sometimes backfire on you.

Justice Demands Due Process: #nokings

Published October 18, 2025 by centaur

So today I'm going to a #nokings protest in downtown Greenville to stand up for our democracy in the face of the authoritarianism creeping over our whole society since the re-election of Donald Trump. I'm never going to be someone who criticizes my opponents for everything that they do, but ever since Trump chose to lie about his affinity for the ideas in Project 2025 - after praising the project at the Heritage Foundation in 2022 and before embracing it in his administration in 2025 proper - we've been sliding more and more to a "unitary executive" idea in which the President has plenary power to do whatever the hell he wants.

Not in my country!

No thrones, no crowns, no kings. Find your event this October 18

So we're going to a #nokings protest in downtown Greenville, South Carolina. No Kings may be a movement, but it's also an idea - and an ideal. For example, the No Kings Act was designed to counter the Supreme Court's blatantly unconstitutional grant of immunity to the President - when the constitution implies exactly the opposite: "the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law."

Now, Heaven knows I'm no fan of Donald Trump's policies, but there's a difference between disagreeing with what he wants to accomplish and opposing the methods by which he's doing it. Sure, I don't like many of the things that he's doing, but that's a normal part of the political process: you don't always get what you want. But the actions of ICE, the roadmap of Project 2025, and Trump's embrace of strongmen is a direct threat to the civic foundations of American democracy, and must be stopped - for everyone's sake.

So, even if you're a conservative supporter of Donald Trump, you should join these protests. The unitary executive theory is the path to authoritarianism, and while the powers and privileges of strongmen may be appealing to Trump and some of his followers, we're driving dangerously close to the edge in this country, and if we slip down that cliff into dictatorship, it can take decades to get back. As Rush Limbaugh said, if you loan power to someone, you've got to watch them. And even if you agree with Trump, you should not give him any more power than he needs - or the next president may use that power against you.

It's going to take a long time to get our civic ship righted; it's time to get started.

Stay safe, but be loud!

-the Centaur

Pictured: the ACLU's guide to your rights as a protester, and perhaps more usefully, the Human Rights Campaign's guide to staying safe at a protest.

[twenty twenty-five day two six seven]: living in a vegan paradise

Published September 24, 2025 by centaur

Anyone who knows Greenville, South Carolina would NOT describe it as a "vegan paradise". The closest place I can think of that fits that description is Las Vegas, which explicitly features vegan and vegetarian dining thanks to Steve Wynn ( https://www.wynnlasvegas.com/dining/vegetarian-dining ). Asheville, North Carolina, Montreal in Canada, and the San Francisco Bay Area are neck-and-neck behind.

Greenville? I'd snarkily say "not so much", but actually my home town has a fair share of vegan restaurants (Sunbelly, the Naked Vegan, and the Vegan Farmercy come to mind), as well as those which have a vegan menu (Entre Nous / Maestro, the 07, the 05, and the One 5 leap to mind). But actually we live in a time where many restaurants have vegan options, including our favorite, Brixx.

Veganism is an ethical necessity for some, but a luxury for most of us: most humans have not lived in an environment in which they could choose to go vegan even if they wanted to. Fortunately, even in traditional Greenville, South Carolina, we've reached the point where many places have a vast selection of vegan food items, and me and my wife can have a meal together, entirely cruelty-free.

-the Centaur

Pictured: hummus trio at Brixx.

[twenty twenty-five day two six six]: gracious to simply say thank you

Published September 23, 2025 by centaur

I think I've mentioned before that I once got into an argument with a friend over whether you should complain about something you got for free. My friend said, "If someone buys you a steak, you don't complain about how well it was done, you just say thank you." No, that's how bullies give gifts: with the expectation that they can unilaterally create a debt with an expectation of gratitude.

In real life, it is, of course, gracious to simply say thank you when you receive a gift, even it isn't something that you wanted - or, even if it is not something you approve of. For example, my wife, who is vegan, used to simply smile and say thank you if she has been given something that she would not normally eat, because she's an ethical vegan: the animal has already died, so she would rather it not go to waste.

But she's found herself doing that less and less: some non-vegan food makes her sick, some non-vegan food simply doesn't taste good anymore, and, some non-vegan people are just being dicks. Once we went to a friend's house for Thanksgiving dinner, and they assured her that there would be many vegan options; when we got there, the only thing that was vegan was salad, no dressing, and they literally told her to "suck it up."

The entitlement of the giver gets drawn into even sharper relief when it comes to food allergies. More than one friend has ended up sick because waitstaff lied about what was in their food - and I do mean lied, because in more than one case they specifically asked about it, and then when the food arrived the waitstaff said something like, "but it's chopped up finely, you'll never taste it." Taste isn't the problem, buddy.

But bad actors do not fill the whole world, and the positive side to my friend's argument is that if someone has done something nice for you, it can ruin their day to find out that their extra effort wasn't wanted. Case in point is what C. S. Lewis called "the gluttony of delicacy": where you're super particular about what you want, but don't see it as being demanding or gluttonous because you're "not asking for much."

For example, I hate for stuff to go to waste, and don't use straws, or lemons, in my iced tea, so I ask waitstaff for "unsweetened iced tea, no lemon, no straw." Now, I don't really sweet tea anymore---originally for health and now for taste reasons---so I would send the wrong drink back; but if they give me a lemon and straw, I don't say anything. Thankfully, results from NASA's space probes show the Earth rests on the back of a giant turtle, not a giant camel, so hopefully, getting one extra straw will not cause the end of the world. (1)

But not wanting things to go to waste can ... interact ... with generosity. Another case in point: hot peppers. At one restaurant I go to, you can ask for a little extra sauce, or light cheese, or whatever, and it will happen. At another local restaurant, the kitchen is a little more ... granular with their generosity. I asked for an extra hot pepper on a dish ... and the kitchen sent out an entire plate of extra peppers.

My server buddy always knows what's up and once warned me: "you know, for this kitchen ... let's not make the order too complicated." So we try to keep things simple for them. They've got our best interests at heart. And when they do send out an entire plate of hot peppers when I want just one, I smile and say thank you, and do my best to eat as many of them as I can ... before my mouth catches on fire. (2)

-the Centaur

Pictured: Bistec y camarones con pimientos adicionales.

(1) NASA results actually show that neither oversized tortoises nor dromedaries play any significant astronomical role, making the apocalyptic potential of extra drinking straws even more remote.

(2) I did not, indeed, finish the entire plate of peppers - there were like 200% more peppers than I wanted.

[twenty twenty-five day two sixty five]: can’t see me

Published September 22, 2025 by centaur

Cats are so colorful and varied it's easy to forget that part of the function of coloring is camouflage. I almost didn't see this little gal sitting in our front foyer! But the camera never lies:

Meet Lovi(licious(ness)), the fifth member of our increasing series of L-named cats. This little lady started coming round our house in San Jose, and after Sandi started feeding her, she soon won her over (it is not clear who won whom over). Sandi welcomed her inside, where Lovi started using the litter box like a pro. We suspect she was someone's kitten who was scared away from their home by fireworks at the Fourth of July, and after unsuccessfully attempting to find her owners, Sandi brought her back to South Carolina.

Crazy cat people here we come.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Um, I said it: our new cat, in our new foyer, trying, unsuccessfully, to hide.