the brandensite
hello and welcome to my website
I live Santa Clara, California – not far from where I was born. I work in IT and make a lot of photos. I'm Jewish. My dream vacation involves sitting at a sidewalk cafe for hours, sipping coffee.
the brandensite is a vanity project where I collect all of things I've put onto the internet in a big, fat glorification of myself. I've maintained this monument to arrogance in one form or another since I was thirteen years old in 1995. This is my social media.
Lawrence Expressway (Pinhole, April 2021)
I love photography. I love learning about photography and making my own photos. I share my new photos on Flickr almost every day, and I have a photo portfolio website. I will talk about photography at the slightest provocation. This website is one such provocation. Beware all ye who dare:
If prints be what you crave, I will mail you a photo I've made.
Observation (2020)
As a kid I played action and strategy video games. But since becoming an old curmudgeon I've lost my patience for those. I've now grown fascinated with exploration and storytelling games, surprised to find there a fantastic wealth of hidden universes and subtle gameplay:
My recent favorite musical artists are VNV Nation, mind.in.a.box, The Decemberists, The National, Project Pitchfork, genCAB, Moby, Rotersand, purity ring, and Röyksopp.
I obsess over an extensive, curated, eclectic and growing library of music which is meaningful to me. I put the library metadata online (not the music) and it consists of 17,283 tracks from 2,115 albums from 867 musical artists. Since February 2006, the library has logged 502,832 track plays, or a total time I've spent listening to music:
In English, the days of the week are named after Germanic gods. All, that is, except Saturday, which is instead named after the Roman diety Saturn. How did the big guy pull off such a feat?
running commentary
Blog Monetization 2024 Sep 11
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Environmental Disaster in Los Angeles 2024 Sep 11
It is common knowledge in Northern California that LA is an toxic hellhole living embodiment of the apocalypse ocean's garbled vomit on the shore, but it turns out some of this is actually true. The Dominguez Channel running through all of LA's poorest and ethnic neighborhoods has been used as an industrial runoff open sewer for so long that it is literally poisoning everything near it. Not that once the waters of the channel reach the ocean they fare much better, seeing as the coastal waters have been used as an industrial dump site for everything from radioactive waste to live ammunition to raw poisonous sludge. Los Angeles, I'm yours.
Little white lies about blue light 2024 Sep 11
Everyone knows that seeing blue lights at K-Mart means things are on sale and also that blue lights at night time makes you sleep less gooder. However, to nobody with a brain's surprise, one of these two claims is completely bullshit.
Bruce Arntson's "Tree Climbing Shoes" 2024 Sep 11
This ridiculous song from Ernest Goes to Jail has been living rent-free in my head for thirty years. "Don't make me climb the coconut tree, these aren't my tree-climbing shoes."
Why is salt iodized? 2024 Sep 11
Because lack of iodine causes many ailments, that's why. But how did doctors convince (almost) the entire world to iodize its salt supply? Surely the public was skeptical of the claims of these so-called "scientists"? Turns out, they were.
Human Revolution - Purity First 2024 Sep 10
Thirteen years ago an ad was published to sell a video game called Deus Ex. But unlike most ads, this one is strangely prescient and uniquely horrifying, and feels only more and more so with each passing year.
AT&T Long Lines 2024 Sep 9
How did a long distance phone call work in the era before satellites and fiber optics? AT&T Long Lines is how: a series of microwave repeaters linking together our country. And as they were built at the height of the Cold War and carried critical military information as well as regular phone calls (and television) their remnants serve as another of the many monuments left in our country to the threat of nuclear annihilation.
Luis Moises Gomez 2024 Sep 9
Luis Moises Gomez (born in 1660, died in 1740) was a Sephardic Jew who immigrated to New York in 1703 and established what is now the earliest-known still-standing Jewish home in America. His family and their home are now the site of a museum, which preserves their history.
Economics is Really Hard 2024 Sep 6
People don't listen to expert economists even though they should, and economists have the data to back that up. The reason for this is that economics is really hard, harder than most people expect.
Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo? 2024 Sep 6
The blog post is interesting in itself, but what's really fascinating about this is the person asking it. This isn't some random internet dweeb armchair expert poking at something they don't understand. Author Alex Wellerstein is a about as much an authority on this topic as a civilian can be, and since he's baffled, therefore I too am baffled.
older!