chadkoh

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 19:13:55 -0700

Reclining on the patio. Rabbits run back in forth around the edge, playing. A squirrel walks along the top of the fence, pausing before leaping to a nearby tree. I hold Hild, nearly halfway through, and note the way the skin wrinkles on my left thumb. No, a little longer. The light is still good.

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 21:35:16 -0700

True freedom is not the ability to fullfil our every craving at any time, but to be free from our craving in the first place.

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 15:40:00 -0700

Finished The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut 📚

My thoughts hardcover.app/books/the…

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 16:04:43 -0700

Love working from my home office on days like this 🌞

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:50:25 -0700

Game watching time! At the fan zone at Surrey City Center

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:41:00 -0700

Wife came home after 6 days in the interior at a conference and visiting friends and family. We went for a lunch date at a Korean Chinese place and have been talking for hours as we catch one another up. 6 days is long, especially for the one left behind 💞

Walking through history in Heidelberg

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 09:00:00 -0700

In 2000 I was an exchange student at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. A lot of my life ties directly back to that experience, a real turning point. For one, it is where I met my wife. I lost touch with most students on the program. One, who I will call Tee, I have kept in touch with these past few years, exchanging birthday greetings and family updates.

After wandering the southwestern German village of Dühren on a dead Sunday morning, Tee arrived to pick me up — our first time meeting in person in 25 years. We spent the day together in nearby Heidelberg, the cute little college town with a 16th century red sandstone castle on the hill overlooking the Neckar River and the valley below from a strategic (and scenic!) spot.

On Sundays most shops in Germany are closed but the narrow cobbled streets of old town Heidelberg were filled with tourists under the watchful gaze of the castle. Things were generally pretty lively. We had lunch and caught up on the last two and a half decades.

I had been to Heidelberg once before, on a decidedly less clement day back during my first trip to Germany in late 2024 (see the photos), so I knew my way around. It was nice to see things in spring weather, but we were mostly here to spend time together picking through our personal pasts.

Walking through the grounds originally constructed in the 12th century we talked a lot about board games. Tee has really got into them in the past decade, and I related my own picking up of the hobby and TTRPGs. I asked him to fill me in about Das Schwarze Auge (“The Dark Eye” in English), a German alternative to Dungeons & Dragons with a massive following… that I had never heard of until the day before (at the wedding I attended no less!?).

We walked up long curving paths, down wide stone stairs, and through the flat gardens, viewing the castle and town below from various angles taking selfies. Work was a common topic, not surprising for two middle-aged dudes. Things have been very good for him for the last couple of years. Hearing about how fulfilled he is feeling after all these years just made me feel warm inside (cf. mudita).

Back down in the town we sat for a coffee and Tee treated me to a “real” apple strudel and then drove me to Frankfurt where I was to spend my last few days in Germany. It was on his way back to his home in the northwest. We gabbered on more about board games, digital sovereignty, AI, kids leaving home, evolving marriages, health and aging — all while hitting 209 km/h on the Autobahn (a personal record for me!).

Our time was limited, but we had developed the trust of a 25-year-old correspondence, allowing us to get deep. Altogether we spent 8 hours together and never stopped talking the whole time. It was brilliant, and I think if we lived near one another we would be close friends.

Oh, and it was nice to walk through old Heidelberg Castle again too.

See all the pics on Flickr →

London, Part 2 — Another trip report

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 15:42:09 -0700

After my first visit to London in February I knew I had to return. So I did a 4 day stopover on my way to Germany for a wedding.

On the first day I journeyed to South Kensington on the metro to read Younghusband’s journals at the Royal Geographic Society. This was scheduled since there was a Tube strike planned from my second day. That was also the reason I decided to stay in Bloomsbury, a more central location, allowing me to walk to most of the other places I wanted to visit during the few days I was in the UK.

Samurai at the British Museum

My hotel by Bloomsbury Square was right beside the British Museum. Last February I spent 6 hours just wandering the free (as in beer) halls of that massive building. This time I went with the goal of spending more time in the Anglo-Saxon area with the Sutton Hoo belt buckle, and then visiting the paid exhibition Samurai co-curated by Oleg Benesch, an academic I have followed for a while.

Having lived and traveled around Japan for 13 years, dedicated a goodly amount of time studying classical martial arts and nearly obtaining a minor in Japanese history (focused on the Warring States Period), my expectations of this exhibition were truthfully… pretty snobbish. But wow was I blown away! The exhibition contained so many amazing artifacts from collectors outside of Japan, that anyone inside of Japan would be jealous!

The point of the exhibition is to disabuse popular ideas of what the samurai were. They are not the Asian analogue of chivalric knights following some common code of conduct. The exhibition opens with clips from the Netflix series Shōgun and ends with a display of modern adaptations of the samurai image including the original costume of Darth Vader.

My assessment was the exhibition does an excellent job of teaching people about the “real” samurai. My only complaint was about the six or seven suits of armour that were placed here and there were not actually placed in the right point in timeline, which is fine I suppose, but there was no explanation that “even though we are talking about the Kamakura period note that this armour has metal plates which is a property of late 16th century armour due to the introduction of guns by the Portuguese”… yes, I am being a little pedantic, and don’t let that take away from the effort which I think was done very well and I expect it to be effective in changing non-specialist impressions of the samurai.

(And just to be a little more pedantic, please forgive me, I would have to say the gift shop was also pretty crass with a bunch of its merchandise. But what can you expect? It’s a gift shop, not an art gallery. The book that was produced for the exhibition is pretty excellent though.)

Some notable items:

portrait of Itō Mancio!
perfect 12th C Heart Sutra with gold ink on indigo paper
a really nice display of different spear types
some really excellent bows
Marishiten arrowhead!
tsuba (sword guard) collections are always great… but they had no info about them unfortunately
so many Ukiyo-e owned by the British Museum that you could never see in Japan!

Listen to this excellent interview with Oleg and his co-curator Rosina Buckland (from the British Museum) to get some more insight of why and how they put Samurai together.

📸 See all the images in full screen on Flickr →

The joy of books at the British Library

A few blocks north of the British Museum, under the looming towers of St Pancras Station is the modern British Library, a long modernist building with sweeping curves and a blocky modernist statue of Sir Isaac Newton at the entrance. The British Library is the national library, similar to the American Library of Congress, so it has a massive responsibility and collection.

The lobby area is open to the public and there was a lot of public there when I arrived. All tables were packed, people were sitting on the floors, the cafe was full. Even the library bookstore was crowded. I have no idea what it was like behind the locked doors of the actual stacks, for which you needed a pass to get in. The center of the library is a 3 storey tall class case called The King’s Library. A case makes it sound small, but it is actually three stacked rooms with a locked entrance on the first floor. The external walls were all glass letting you see the ancient books on display. I don’t think you could even access those books from the inside. There was a little elevator tucked out of sight for when a librarian needed to retrieve a volume.

The reason I came to the library was for the treasures. And oh! Treasures they were! I saw many fabulous printed works, notably:

the fourth Bible printed off of Gutenberg’s machine from 1462
Codex Sinaiticus, the earliest surviving complete New Testament from the 4th C
one of the four surviving copies of Magna Carta
A copy of the Zoroastrian religious code from Yazd, Iran, dated to 1647
a multi-lingual Bible from the early 1500s with Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew
wax tablets for homework from Egypt in the 2nd C
1000 year old woodblock print of the Avalokitesvara Sutra from Dunhuang
Proclamation of Emancipation from 1865
a 17th C copy of 百人一首　One Hundred Poets
a bunch of Shakespeare’s folios from the time
a page from Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketchbook
Beethoven’s super messy sketchbook
the handwritten script for Monty Python’s famous Spanish Inquisition sketch
tons of gorgeously illuminated texts that sparkled in the low overhead lights
and so much more!!

Unfortunately the Lindisfarne Gospels (video overview) were taken out of rotation just weeks before I arrived. I was really looking forward to seeing that!

I don’t really know what else to say than being at the British Library just hammered home the importance of physical books, and how they can be such beautiful objects: portable temple’s to knowledge, history, and legacy. We need to keep making them.

I really regret not being able to show you any photos. I am obviously not used to my fancy new camera, and even though I took a million pics, they are all out of focus! (unless that is some sort of fancy new security feature the museum has in place).

More time at Newspeak House

After visiting the British Library and seeing Platform 9¾ I walked across London all the way to the East End and back to Newspeak House, getting lost in the Barbican and stopping by Christ Church Spitalfields in homage to the novel Hawksmoor which I read after my first trip when I stayed near the church.

I previously wrote lovingly about Newspeak so it is no surprise that I turned up again, and in fact came twice. First was for a meetup of the Journalism Technology London Meetup where I gave a little talk, and then again the next night for Ration Club, their weekly free community meal. We had baked potatoes with a million different toppings and I was there until 1:30am talking about Oakeshott and Rawls. Love Newspeak.

What else

On my final day in the city I enjoyed the lovely weather I walked from my hotel down Whitehall to see all the various statues and the Horse Guards. I took more selfies with Big Ben but in the day time. Wow he is shiny! And I got a shot of the statue of Boudicca now that I know who she is. From there I ate lunch in an old pub that when I left had an Italian tour group stopped in front to admire it, and visited Westminster Abbey (my full review here). That was impressive. From there I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out on Pall Mall and Piccadilly, enjoying the sun and people watching before heading back to my hotel and packing for the morrow.

The next morning the Tube strike was still on so took a taxi to the DLR station at Tower Hill and rode out to London City airport where I caught a short flight to Frankfurt and the next leg of my journey which I will cover next time. 👋

That’s the end of this short trip report! I thoroughly enjoyed it. The weather was brilliant and I was in a great spot. I am sure I could visit a dozen more times and still have fun, but next time I go to the UK I would like to see some other communities (like Bristol!).

See all my photos on Flickr:

London April 2026 (All)
🧭 Royal Geographical Society (and read the post about Younghusband’s Journals)
🏛️ British Museum and the SAMURAI exhibition
⛪ Westminster Abbey (read the trip report)

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 19:09:33 -0700

Finished The Rebel’s Clinic The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon 📚

Epilogue is a broad overview of Fanon’s influence across countries/fields/eras. Masterclass of analysis: informative, provocative, and well-written. @adamshatz.bsky.social really stuck the landing of this phenomenal book.

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 12:40:52 -0700

In the last 15m of this ep of @techpolicypress.bsky.social Mozilla CTO Raffi Krikorian points out something really important: the agent harness might be the leverage point for governance.

www.techpolicy.press/why-the-a…

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 23:36:16 -0700

A nice round number 🧘

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 19:53:23 -0700

Perfect night for eating mandu 🥟 on the patio (wife is drinking the beer. Dumplings are vegetarian)

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:52:52 -0700

Damn anti-SOGI protesters at my kids school today for Pride month. Apparently the turnout is getting smaller every year, it was just a handful of people today. But damn. Poor kids to see that hate spewed in front of their school.

Sun, 31 May 2026 20:47:43 -0700

Monthly newsletter roundup: it is funny how we enjoy some things that come back around, and have to block other things.

buttondown.com/chadkoh/a…

Sun, 31 May 2026 11:15:15 -0700

Today is the last day of early bird pricing for DwebYVR Cascadia Camp this summer! luma.com/1hj4bko4

Fri, 29 May 2026 16:15:05 -0700

Ever wonder how fast you could get from Kobe to Kyoto by train travelling at Mach 1?

Thu, 28 May 2026 21:25:44 -0700

The Truth has been revealed to be a d20!

#encyclical #DnD

Wed, 27 May 2026 17:45:36 -0700

Bill C-22 is the Carney government’s second attempt, after an earlier bill folded under pressure to retract what was widely considered to be overly intrusive search powers.

We need to keep up the pressure to kill the third attempt, and others beyond 🔥

#cdnpoli #BillC22 #dontsurveilme

Reading the Journals of Younghusband

Wed, 27 May 2026 12:00:01 -0700

The overstuffed bed of the Seman Hotel in Kashgar was a luxury after a 30+ hour bus ride along the edge of the Taklamakan Desert. The lighting in the room was low, with shadows adding more complexity to the fancy moulding and cornices. I read Peter Hopkirk while leaning on a mountain of pillows.

Prior to becoming a hotel in 1950, the building served as the embassy of the Russian empire in the 19th century. Just across the road was the British embassy where at the end of the 19th Century the British explorer Sir Francis Younghusband stayed. Here in the Seman Bronislav Grombchevsky would have enjoyed quarters significantly better than his tent in the mountain passes of Central Asia. Gromchevsky was Captain Younhusband’s Russian counterpart in The Great Game, the competition between the British and Russian empires for control over Central Asia.

In the late 19th century Imperial explorers trekked the Himalayan and related mountain ranges, mapping potential passes and routes that could be of advantage for their particular empire. Russia wanted to take India, the crown jewel of the British empire away. The British empire wanted a series of friendly buffer states to protect its “possession”. Often the explorers knew one another, and would even run into one another to share a meal. Younghusband records his first encounter with Grombchevky in his journal of 1899:

Oct 23. March to Khan-akzai & met Grombtchevsky & found him to be a very good sort of fellow & it was a decided pleasure having a European to talk to. I have written all the important information about him in a letter to Col Nisbet [?]. He lived in a small sort of umbrella tent just large enough to hold a light camp bed. He was in uniform . a peaked cap with a red band, a long brown sort of overcoat lined with fur & buttoning tight across the chest — pantaloons with a thin red stripe like our Infantry, & long boots. He is a fine tall good looking man & says he is a Pole by birth. There is with him a German naturalist named Conrad.

Last month I had the pleasure of reading those words as written by the hand of Younghusband himself, in his journals kept in the Royal Geographical Society in London.

One hundred years after that fateful meeting in the mountain passes of the Pamirs I spent a lot time reading about adventurers crossing the roof of the world. I had a bit of an obsession with the explorer Younghusband, using that name as a pseudonym on the web. In 2004 I had the pleasure of visiting the Pamir Plateau myself, seeing the same red mountains that Younghusband commented on more than a century earlier (see some photos from Chinese Turkestan here). A couple of years after my trip a friend gifted me a 1936 copy of Younghusband’s book Everest: The Challege as a wedding present.

Patrick French’s biography of Younghusband showed how much of a complex character he was, turning from imperialist adventurer to a spiritualist. I read that book with envy as French retraced Younghusband’s steps over high mountain passes.

I knew that Younghusband had gifted many of his personal items to the Royal Geographical Society, which he held so dear. One day, I thought, I will journey to London and see journals myself. Last month, I was able to tick that particular item off my bucketlist.

At the RGS

The RGS is located on the south side of Kensington Gardens. Founded in 1830 the massive red brick building has statues of Shackleton and Livingstone adorning its walls. I made my way from South Kensington tube station on a bright spring morning, the clear blue sky giving the whitewashed townhomes of Kensington a glorious sheen. This area of London is quite different to where I stayed in Brick Lane or even the fancy Bloomsbury area. I felt like I would run into Hugh Grant at any moment!

Making my way north to RGS I walked through the grounds of University College London, and past the Natural History Museum with a massive line of tourists spewing out the front like an army of ants eager to enter their nest.

I love the feeling of walking a university campus on a fresh spring day. I eagerly made my way to RGS on the north end of the campus.

The RGS requires at least 2 weeks notice to pull items for viewing. It has over 2 million items in its care. A month before my trip to London I went through the online index and requested everything Younghusband-related I could find, all for the low cost of £10! On the day I walked down the circular stairs and into the Foyle Reading Room where there was a table laid out like a banquet.

Before I describe the table I should describe the room. The Foyle Reading Room is similar to any other library sub-basement. High windows let in natural light. Copies of guidebooks (eg Lonely Planet) and issues of the Royal Geographical Society’s various publications lined the walls. At intervals busts of people like Gertrude Bell and and Sir Richard Burton are interspersed with globes of different size and era. In one corner there was a stack of massive kris knives. 🤷‍♂️

The long table where my treasures awaited was actually divided into three areas (two other researchers would arrive later in the day, one investigating women mountaineers and I never learned what the other one was working on.) At the far end a lightbox embedded into the table illuminated several rows of glass slides with images of the wide Tibetan plains and ancient stone forts on a hill, another with Mount Everest rising up in the background, a mountaineer posing at the foot of massive frozen waterfalls, the Potala palace, and more. Next to that was a stack of old books including copies of the Geographical Journal from over 100 years ago with articles written by Younghusband about his adventures, his 1907 report “Geographical Results of the Tibet Mission”, clear plastic envelopes containing printed photos, and two paper envelopes containing the hand-written journals of Captain Younghusband from 1899. To the right of the books was a map of the mountain passes between modern day China and Pakistan, exactly where I was 20 years ago. In the middle of the table were some physical specimens: two cloudy jade cups, a small replica of the gate to Lhasa awarded to Youngshuband as a congratulatory momento for the Tibet mission, and a small Buddha statue presented to Younghusband by the “regent” of Lhasa upon his exit of the city. That statue is the same one in the photo below, clutched by an elderly Younghusband who was visiting Ottawa for the inaugural meeting of the Canadian Geographical Society in 1929.

The librarians were also kind enough to pull a photo album from someone else in the Tibet mission containing some excellent images of the people and landscape of Tibet at the time, including the entry gate to Lhasa with the Potala Palace in the background.

Youngshusband had many adventures: a 1200 mile journey across China; trekking the Changbai Mountains in Machuria; facing Hunza raders in Ladakh; invading Tibet… but I was mostly interested in the time he spent in the Pamirs and wintered in Kashgar, where I was based in 2004. The two hand-written journals from 1889 detailed his crossing to China from India, including the meeting with Gromchevsky noted above. I sat and read every line of these, imagining him scribbling while on horse or camel-back, or in a little tent after a hard day’s ride. They are very readable. Some days have just one line saying that they marched in some bad weather. Other entries are full of details from conversations with local tribal leaders: intelligence gathering for the Great Game. In the middle are a bunch of lists of provisions and at the back, upside down and in the opposite direction of the journals are accounting tables tracking payments to labourers, purchases, and tolls paid. Maybe I am just a nerd, but it was cool to see that kind of “behind-the-scenes” detail. The details of the journal were further enriched by the photos and other articles that I spent the entire day pouring over.

Taking Lunch, taking stock

Halfway through the day I decided to get something to eat. As a guest of the RGS I was able to use the tea room, the staff canteen. Back up the circular stairway I made my way into the historical RGS building, a three story brick mansion that houses a large theatre and a number of rooms with paraphernalia from different expeditions and portraits of famous explorers.

I am somewhat embarrassed to say that I got lost on my way to the tea room (ironic), but eventually found my way to a bright yellow space with a staff refrigerator and nice Russian-sounding lady who got me a soup and a panini. I listened to working geographers sat at wooden tables having lunch and discussing business before retreating back upstairs into areas that I was not permitted to enter, no matter how much I wanted to explore. I ate below a gorgeous photo of the gorge at Petra. Across the room a portrait of James Silk Buckingham dressed in Arab garb loomed over the room.

Afterwards I took a walk outside in the courtyard before returning down into the Foyle Reading Room to finish my studies.

The day at RGS was one of conflicting feelings. On the one hand the absolute nerdy joy of checking off an item that has been on my bucket list for over 20 years was palpable. I took a million photos but signed a promise that I would not post any detailed images of the artefacts online, so unfortunately I cannot share any more details with you.

When I was younger I admired these kinds of explorers with a romantic sense of adventure. Younghusband, Marco Polo, Ibn Khaldun… I read about all their trips. The open road/sea/desert was what drew me.

But actually sitting down to read the thoughts of explorers from those times is… well… there is a lot of imperialism to contend with. As he aged Younghusband became more spiritual, and maybe even more forgiving. But this doesn’t redeem him. And in fact may have just downshifted into Orientalism, fascinated with “the wisdom of the East”.

Previously I have discussed the topic of adventuring and its associated ethical problems. I can admire those brave enough to explore our shared world, as long as they are willing to learn and listen about other peoples and cultures without categorizing or ranking them. We travel because we seek to learn the hearts of others, not to establish hierarchies (I hope! I wish!).

Like the British Museum, the RGS is a wonderful place to learn. But it requires navigating a complex socio-historical reality, something I am still exploring and writing about in journals of my own.

All Photos from RGS

Also, during my last trip to London I spotted some Younghusband items in British Museum

Wed, 27 May 2026 11:26:45 -0700

Across every aspect of our digital economy, we should carefully map our dependencies and ask ourselves, “What’s our simplest collaborative path to self-reliance?”

Minimal Viable Sovereignty. @vassb.bsky.social in @betakit.com

betakit.com/how-sover…

Tue, 26 May 2026 21:46:55 -0700

Found what looks like a decent ePub conversion of the Pope’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas in case you want to take some time reading and annotating it. That’s what I am going to do.

drive.google.com/file/d/1c…

Tue, 26 May 2026 21:37:06 -0700

TIL about this great project. They have chapters here in Vancouver as well as the Okanagan and many other places. Look at their map of clinics and the next time you #travel please consider taking a bag. There are special policies for humanitarian baggage. 🧳

njt.net

Tue, 26 May 2026 21:14:12 -0700

Just saw Sennheiser released the Momentum 5. Looked at some early reviews but I need someone to test how it is for those of us with ANC sickness! I haven’t found a decent pair of modern headphones that don’t make me sick when ANC is turned on.

Tue, 26 May 2026 20:52:22 -0700

Just finished the first chapter of The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut 📚

Wow! This comes out swinging!

Mon, 25 May 2026 10:25:50 -0700

Good morning skitches! I was gifted this award-winning bean and it is really delicious! So smooth ☕️