Still pretty heads down here on StoryTime. I'd like to be writing more but it's tough to mix that and "spending as much time as I can coding" together – they draw on a lot of the same mental stores. One of the things I appreciate about this newsletter is it functions as a kind of "minimum monthly payment" on writing. I'll get something out, even if it's kind of slapped together on the last afternoon of the month.
Also – hi! I'm Nat Bennett, and I'm in your inbox because you signed up for Mere Being, a monthly newsletter that I write instead of being on basically any social media.
Something we've been watching that I find life-sustaining: Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. It's basically a woke western, about a woman doctor in Colorado Springs just after the Civil War. The basic structure of an episode is something like, "The town's idiot white men refuse to listen to Dr. Quinn about something she is extremely right about. Then an absurdly handsome man with long flowing hair named Byron Sully shows up and throws tomahawks at everyone until they do what she says."
The thing I like about the show is that Dr. Quinn loses a lot. Her patients die. The sexist and racist men in town stay sexist and racist. Things go okay for her anyway! She has friends and allies, and sometimes people come around, maybe not on the concept of lady doctors in general but at least on her.
Civilization VII is fine. It was buggy enough to be borderline unplayable the first week but they've ironed most of that out with patches by now. Overall it's a little bit "flat" feeling, but it's capable of staying engaging for eight hours at a stretch which is basically what I ask for in a Civ game.
The Civ/leader combos are occasionally very funny. Some of the interactions between Civs and leader agendas are pretty clever. I personally hate Tecumseh for no good reason. This is basically what I ask for in a Civ game.
Charlemagne is probably the most fun of any of the leaders I've tried so far – the party king! I'm looking forward to playing him in a bunch of different ways and trying different combos.
Currently deeply engaged in Project Potato – a friend's new boyfriend likes them so I'm trying to get the hang of cooking them well. I've just somehow never spent a lot of time with them? The occasional baked sweet potato but otherwise they're never the first starch I reach for.
Mostly this means spending a lot of time with Serious Eats. Luckily, it turns out that potatoes are easy, and delicious. My favorite so far are crispy roast potatoes (boiled in alkaline water) but I was pleasantly surprised by how well mashed potatoes came together as well. I always thought of mashed potatoes as a bit fussy or a lot of work and I guess it is several steps but it didn't feel particularly onerous. Worked well to make onion gravy with meatballs at the same time, and serve it all with some frozen peas.
The right tools do help. A potato ricer is much easier to manage than a masher – and a good potato peeler makes a difference. I used to do all my peeling with a paring knife — insane.
It also helps that I have access to really good potatoes. Have we talked about Rainbow Grocery before? Truly, life changing. I eat differently because of it – it's the best, closest grocery store nearby, and they don't sell meat. I'm always a little startled by how good the produce is from it. I'd love to read an article about their supply chain.
That's all I've got in me for today. More soon.
- Nat