The essay that I published here on Monday is perhaps my favorite piece of writing I've ever produced. I think that this matters: I work alone, and I spend a lot of time thinking about my work and how it both reflects upon and fits into the rest of my life, and if I'm not fully excited about what I'm writing, I don't see how or why anyone else would be.
That said, I understand how different it was from the newsletter that it evolved from. It wasn't very newsy, and it wasn't particularly skimmable, and it did start with an extended recollection of an emotionally complex period in my early life. I'm not sure how much emotional complexity you're looking for on a Monday morning, and I don't know whether you'll wade through a paragraph or two of emotional complexity in order to get to some detailed technical information on PVC chemistry, and PVC toy assembly, and how slow oscillations in the electromagnetic field are used to bring us insanely cheap PVC toys.
I think that this is what these Friday "Scope Creep" issues are mostly for: To give you a skimmable selection of technical-literary snacks — things you can consume, digest, and bring with you to whatever you're doing today. Ideally these are drawn from work I did for Monday's essay; sometimes they arise during discussions I've had after the essay was published. And maybe they convince you to revisit the longer and more complex piece, if only to get a better sense of why the heck I ended up down some particular rabbit hole in the first place.
SCOPE CREEP.
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