Progress & the bad old days, 8/20/26

Posted on by Henry

I was catching up with a friend recently and learned that she had, in the years since we’d last spoken, nearly died from an ectopic pregnancy. Hearing that felt sad and spooky.

Ectopic pregnancies, for those of you who don’t know, occur when the fertilized egg implants outside of the main chamber of the uterus. Generally this means the fertilized egg is stuck in the fallopian tube, but they can be in more exciting places. This fertilized egg cannot be brought to term—the fetus can’t develop and survive anywhere but the uterus, because the rest of the abdomen (including the fallopian tube) lacks the blood flow and nutrients and the ability to stretch and encompass a growing fetus. If the fetus grows enough while not in the uterus, it will kill the parent.

My friend didn’t recognize her condition before she was already in trouble. She spent a good while close to death in the hospital as a result. All I could think as she shared this was, “the bad old days are closer than they appear.”

Continue reading →

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)

Posted on by Henry

Hot damn Spider-Man: Brand New Day made me happy.

I’ve been a big fan of the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies. I don’t love them all equally, but I feel like they’ve held onto what really makes a Spider-Man story shine: heart.

These movies aren’t about massive alien invasions, or angry purple men, or any of that (to borrow a phrase from Brand New Day) “big potatoes” stuff. They’re all about small potatoes. When there are “big potato” events, these movies focus instead on the effect those big events have on smaller people in their everyday lives. They focus on how people wrestle with the consequences of those big things on a much smaller and more intimate scale. They’re about struggling to balance the responsibilities of being a hero with the responsibilities of being a regular person, and they’re about the costs of that struggle.

As it turns out…

Continue reading →

Dewdrops, 8/6/26

Posted on by Henry

I’m still on the road, and am still learning about how doxycycline makes me more prone to sunburn. I’m also learning the limits of my toddler’s tolerance for road trips. Lots of learning happening here.

Moon in the crook of a tree, 7/30/26

Posted on by Henry

The tree is quite large, and my phone doesn’t want to focus on the moon. C’est la vie. It was a gorgeous and wonderful evening.

I’m on the road visiting with family, hence today’s brief post. A note to my future self, though: I want to talk more about the perils of not sharing health stories, and of not embracing health education. That’ll be for another time.

Lyme disease, & humor in Dungeon Crawler Carl

Posted on by Henry

This is a week for arthritic pain, fatigue, and wondering what makes “funny” things funny in Dungeon Crawler Carl (which I wrote about last week).

I’m pretty sure I’ve got Lyme disease. I’m already on doxycycline. I don’t yet have a positive test for Lyme disease, but I’m not waiting for one either.

I have enough circumstantial evidence. I walked through scrub forest and near tall grass in a high risk area—Cape Cod—while on my way to the beach. Two days later Ley noticed I had a weird bruise. About a week after that, stiffness and pain started spreading through my left leg and up my left side. I also got even more sleepy.

Weirdly, some part of me is relieved.

Continue reading →

Class, classes, LitRPGs: implications of game systems 7/16/26

Posted on by Henry

I’ve gotten so behind in tracking what I’ve read in my reading journal, I’m not sure where to begin.

The problem? LitRPG books.

No wait, the problem is that I don’t have the focus to keep up with my usual book logging commitment. I don’t have that focus because baby. And I don’t make time for logging the books I’ve read because… baby. Baby, and everything else that needs to be done.

Another part of the problem is that I can read ebooks on my phone while I’m doing other things, including while I hum and rock my baby to sleep. That works just fine. It works far better, far more easily, than…

Continue reading →

Fatherhood & masculinity, cont. 7/9/26

Posted on by Henry

I wrote last week about how fatherhood has changed my experience of masculinity. That post focused on what my prior experience had been, and how my own relationship with that experience had changed. To sum up, I’ve got more skin in the game now. I don’t want to retreat from cultural ideas of masculinity, I want to confront and change them. I’m carrying the banner for my son, trying to give him healthier ways to be a boy and a man than I had. I want him to have more room, to not be squashed by our society’s limited ideas about masculinity.

But there’s more to the ways that fatherhood has changed my own experience. Having my baby with me changes how others experience me. He’s like a magical secret handshake that opens the doors of social contact, that makes strangers suddenly say “oh he’s got a baby, he must be alright.” Somehow being with an infant or toddler makes me safe and acceptable in a way that I can never be without one.

I say all this like these ideas leapt fully formed from my brow like Athena’s critique of gender ideology, but that would be a lie. These thoughts took time. Besides, what really drove all of this home for me was walking through public spaces with an empty baby stroller.

Continue reading →

Fatherhood and masculinity, 7/2/26

Posted on by Henry

Becoming a father has changed my experience of my gender.

I think it’s a good change, but it (like most parts of parenthood) also feels like more work.

Continue reading →

Room to grow: Lootbound (demo)

Posted on by Henry

The Lootbound demo fascinates me. It scratched a series of my itches, handily eating an hour and a half of my Saturday evening and keeping me up past my bedtime. Days after playing it, I find my mind returning to gnaw at its design choices.

It is not, I think, the game for me. But it might be the game for you.

Continue reading →

The Creator (2023)

Posted on by Henry

I finally watched The Creator, a movie directed by Gareth Edwards (the director of Rogue One). I’m a fan of Rogue One. I’ve also long loved stories that use AI and cybernetics to dig into our tender, fleshy explorations of humanity and the soul. I’m clearly the target audience.

If anyone were to love a movie about one person caught up in the conflict between AIs living in syncretic coexistence with humanity, and a fearful and hardhearted imperialist anti-AI America, it would be me. And I do! I do love this movie. But… it’s complicated.

I jotted down this note immediately after finishing The Creator:

Continue reading →