Take 5, D.

Weekly Update 2025-11-09: Anniversaries Edition

What happened during the week of November 3rd - November 9th:

🍁 My prediction last week about peak autumn foliage was premature. Thanks to the warmer days and cooler nights, the trees which didn't shed their leaves in September and October due to drought have burst into a frenzy of color. There are a few bluffs around the intersection of Interstates 44 and 270, somewhat close to the Meramec River, that I use as my guide for autumn displays throughout the years. After a seemingly interminable delay, many of these trees are now in full color...just in time for a serious cold front to move in tonight. So for what may be the last time this year, enjoy a view of autumn trees and trains from Saturday 11-08 at the National Museum of Transportation:

Two Union Pacific engines, including Big Boy #4006, frame warm autumn leaves between them.

🍦This week has seen a days-long celebration by Side Project Cellar for their 11th anniversary. Their first day of business was on November 11, 2014 (which also was my 8th wedding anniversary, a fact I bring up probably too often to longtime regulars and staff), so in celebration Side Project has gone crazy for vanilla this year! A base stout was released every day from Tuesday 11-04 to Saturday 11-08, each with vanilla sourced from different locations around the world: Congo, India, Hawaii, and Indonesia. The Saturday release was a "Grand Cru" that blends all four variants, though the proportions have not been made public. I am still amazed at how far people have traveled for Side Project's big events, as I have met at various times people from Japan, Quebec, China, Brazil, and Norway at anniversary parties and La Côterie gatherings. The biggest celebration was on Saturday 11-08, which I missed in order to view trains and autumn leaves, so who knows what other countries represented themselves yesterday?

🤖 Caira is an interesting camera concept: it is a Micro Four Thirds sensor that attaches via MagSafe to the back of an iPhone, allowing the phone to be used as a viewfinder. It's the inverse of a Hasselblad camera back, when you think about it. However, Hasselblad isn't leaning into generative AI the way Caira is, which is why Caira has some controversy around it. I decided to take the plunge on Kickstarter anyway, even though I'm not a big AI supporter. Why? I view Caira as a supercharged version of what I'm already doing on my iPhone, as I've used the "machine learning" in iOS to remove unwanted objects from my photos, and also to quickly change color schemes on the fly. What Apple calls "machine learning" is basically AI, just with a different naming scheme, so Caira's software features are in my mind a...bigger? version of what I'm already using. Furthermore, the lens mount with Caira is a standard supported by several camera manufacturers, which gives me far more flexibility than using something like Moment's lens setup. When Caira arrives in February 2026, I may have my feet in two vastly different realms of photography: analog 35mm film with the Canon rangefinder; and AI-enabled digital photography with my iPhone.

🛩️ As of this writing, the vacation to El Paso and New Mexico is still on. The cutbacks for flights from Southwest has reached Monday 11-10, and their most recent alert only covers flights up to Wednesday 11-12. I will be really saddened if our flights on Friday 11-14 get canceled, as neither L. nor I have any real backup plans at this time. More news as it develops.

A Couple Two Tree Items To Note From Last Week:

External Actions

Internal Labor

Media

Obligations:

More Info About The Media Selections From This Week:

Another set of paired media for this week. First up, there's the curious idea of McMansions becoming charming and retro, which ties into some Gen Z/Alpha nostalgia about the 90s/00s. Kate Wagner has some wry observations about the rose-colored view of McMansions, and if anyone should comment upon this change of perspective, it should be the woman who gave us McMansion Hell! On the flip side, Kate has been fighting some long-term ailments related to both neurological damage and long COVID, both of which she discusses at length in the late review. Her article also provides a small apology (in terms of length) as to why there haven't been many McMansion Hell pieces of late.

Next up, let's look at Kuga, a train otaku from Japan who dropped an eye-watering $10,000 to travel five days across Canada by train. Kuga has traveled throughout the world to ride trains in various countries, and I'm just going to have to say that from my perspective, his worst rides were in Canada. In my opinion, he has paid far too much money for services and amenities that were not worth the cost. On this set of videos, he dealt with a broken-down train engine in Winnipeg, a several-hour delay immediately after pulling out of Toronto, a broken wireless network that turned the smart TV in his cabin dumb (which I can't imagine helping to dissipate the sheer boredom along a five-day journey), and a train kitchen that ran out of some food items during the journey. The oft-touted highlight of riding a train through the Canadian Rockies happened at night, thanks to the earlier delays. And to be honest, all of these problems don't hold up to his train journey from Winnipeg to Churchill, which was a series of disasters both expensive and smelly, thanks to the broken toilet in his room! So my advice to Kuga, if he ever were to return to Canada, would be to give Canadian trains a pass and just concentrate on the big city metros instead, like Montréal or Toronto.

Last up in our pairing extravaganza will be another look at beer. ABV Chicago tackles the yearly release of Revolution Brewing's Deep Wood series, with both Ryan and Craig showing love for the base beer. This is good news for me, as Deth's Tar is often the easiest one in the set to find! By contrast, Hawaii would kill to have something as varied as a stout, according to what Don't Drink Beer has to say. It would be expensive to get it, but at least it's something distinct from the light lagers that are seemingly everywhere. My experience on Kauai in 2019 largely aligned with DDB, as I found one farmhouse saison in a sea of Hefeweizen and Helles lagers. But in the end, DDB has a point: you’re not really going to Hawaii for the beers.

Now for the solo efforts. Bob’s video on Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge was a highlight because the first two NWR sites folks recommended to him were ones I’ve visited before: Bosque Del Apache NWR in New Mexico, and Merritt Island NWR in Florida. Provided that the flight(s) aren’t canceled, a return to Bosque Del Apache is on our itinerary. As for Montezuma, it looks interesting though I don’t really have plans to visit upstate New York anytime soon.

The Resident Advisor podcast was a neat mix, as the music was both background and foreground. Depending on your mood, you could bounce back and forth between these states of listening. For me, the RA show was more background, but your mileage may vary.

Finally, the memory palace episode on Thornwell Jacobs was a fascinating look at a man with...opinions on race, society, education, and religion. He was very much a man of his time, for both good and bad, and oftentimes there weren't clear distinctions between the two sides. His Crypt Of Civilization was inspired by the discoveries of Ancient Egypt, as he felt there weren't enough artifacts left from their time to piece together what their civilization was truly like. My guess is that Thornwell would have appreciated Patrick Wyman's episode last week about the Ancient Egyptian economies.

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