Author Archives: Luke Witten

Baldposts

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Lily Jiang – Fate, Follicles, and Friendships: A SoftSys Saga

There once was an Aditi Vinod.

She came to Olin to code.

On Discord she called

To tell me she was bald

And to that I said “I already know.”

By chance, in sophomore spring

We needed a SoftSys team.

As we looked around,

By fate (it seems) we found

Two others with domes that gleamed!

More follicle-challenged than Aditi and I,

Richard and Luke held their heads high.

A perfect addition

To our team’s composition,

And our knowledge – an abundance to apply.

Through segfaults and memleaks we’d fight,

But our bond kept our spirits alight.

Though others had hair,

We didn’t despair

Despite finding a load-bearing print statement that night.

wtf

Now seniors, the friendship remains strong.

In this group, we’ve found where we belong.

Through all of the years,

The laughter and tears,

The bond of baldness will be lifelong.

Richard Li – Baldpost A: the sad one

He lost everything so fast.

Well, it began slowly; he could almost delude himself that it wasn’t happening. It’s easy to ignore things when you’re a successful engineer raking in money. Indeed, it started very slowly. He started talking to his friends online more. She started to spend more time at work. His comb slipped slightly faster through his hair. Surely not. Surely it couldn’t be him. The Witten family wasn’t notorious for much, but their famed impeccable hairlines were considered the envy of the neighborhood.

He only gave her pecks now. When was the last time they had made out? Had sex? Even held hands? The corners of his hair line began to fall back. She still made him the soup the way he always liked. They still laughed together on occasion. Then it came out in clumps.  His shower drain seemed to be clogged with hairs every time he was done. He used to insist on communication in every altercation. Now, he yelled. Forcefully. Aggressively. Lovelessly. He began to find hair on every article of clothing he owned. Every time he scratched his head a few more strands would fall out. She slept in another bed. She used to turn down business trips, but now was in Seoul or Paris every other weekend. They fought when she came back — he knew she was sleeping with some guy in Paris. She turned her location off. Did she think he was stupid?

Before he knew it, nothing was left. He ran his fingers through his … there was nothing to run his fingers through. He woke up one morning to a note on the opposite nightstand and a still perfectly-made, icy-cold left side of the bed.

“I have to go. I’m sorry it had to be like this. I’m sorry I’m not strong enough to stand in front of you to tell you this…”

He sat up. The moonlight reflected off of his shiny scalp and practically blinded him in the vanity mirror opposite his bed.

“…I’ve met someone else in Paris, and I’m flying out tonight. Don’t come get me…”

He couldn’t even stop it. The tears began to well up in his eyes. He had been waiting for this day, even dreamed about it on some unfortunately bitter occasions. But now that it was happening, he really couldn’t believe it. She had actually let him go.

It took him a while to wake up that morning. Good riddance, he thought to himself. He was miserable in the relationship. He knew that. Yet his red-rimmed eyes betrayed a deep pain he could not explain. In his mid thirties, here he was, wealthy and successful by all accounts. He still was the pride of the Witten family. He saw this coming a mile away. If she didn’t do it, he would’ve in a couple of weeks. How could he possibly feel like this? He sat down on the curb, frustrated, with his head in his hands. His head… He rubbed his temples, then the back of his skull, and finally the top of his head. He still couldn’t help but feel…

He lost everything so fast.

Aditi Vinod – Baldpost α

Lily woke up on a normal day. A normal Tuesday. A normal hairful Tuesday. She patted the black mop upon her head and felt it spring back up. She could feel in her roots that today was going to be a great day. 

Lily took out her one wheel in a smooth maneuver, almost too smooth. You’d almost think she’d practiced this move in her free time (dear reader, that is because she did). She cruised down the streets, pulling out her phone to send a few messages.

Lily was so busy messaging n wheeling that she didn’t notice the large, white truck skidding to a stop as she ran through a red. 

Or at least that’s what she thought happened. 

Because the truck didn’t actually stop. It slammed into Lily right as she looked up, phone in hand, and uttered the glorious last words, “well, shit,” leaving a suspiciously Lily-shaped splat on the pavement. 

– – –

An alarm blared through the room shocking Lily Jiang out of her bed. She jumped up so fast that she almost hit her head on the ceiling before she realized that it was a n̴o̶r̸m̶a̶l̶ day. A n̴̡̪̼̝̜̙̰͍͚̲͓̼̖̟͎͇̓̌̆̃̍̈́̽̉̏̓͘͜͠͝ọ̵̢̲͍̹͙͙̒͋͐͆̊͗̓̕͜r̷̟͎̫͙̝̞̝͕͙̦̠̓̐̑͑̾̔̆̾́̀̈͒̈́̀͘̕͜ͅm̴̧̔͂̑̃ă̸͓͈̙͗̈͗̋̆̔͛̽͐̐͜͠͝l̷̙̠̦̺͓̥̥͍̦̮̂̃̓̐̎̑̋̑̌͛͂́͂̽̕͜͠͠ͅͅ Tuesday. A normal h̷̨̧͔͕̪̺͍͈̬͔̓̈̈͠ͅå̴̖͇̟̲̟͚̘͑̃̃̀̓͑͂͂̈́̽̓͋͝͝i̵̙̼͈̮̬̤̊̀̌͊̈́̓̑̑̎̉̔̆͛͠͝r̶͙̲̭̻̟̱̼̬̼̘͔̦͎̠͖̖̉̏̕ͅf̵̡̨̬̲̳̹̰̫̹̳̘͍̓̄̀̓̊̊͗͘u̸͈̫͉͌l̸̙̭̣͇͚͑͗̀̈́̉̾͑ Tuesday. 


Lily Jiang went about her normal morning routine: she sat like a potato in her bed, she scrolled on Instagram Reels (becuase why would she use TikTok?), and she dropped her phone on her face. A truly u̸͇̹̦͒̓͛̀͠n̸͕̆͋̇é̵̡̿͐̿v̸̖̦̤̳̮̅e̸͓͗n̶̘͂͑t̵͓̪͉̓͆͋͒f̴̼̈́͐ǔ̴̮͗l̷͔͙̍̏̿̍ Tuesday morning.

Lily Jiang remembered that she’d had an interesting dream last night, but for the life of her, could not recall what happened. The events seemed intriguing, potentially traumatizing, based on the fact that she had woken up sweating, but surely, that was a fluke. Afterall, it was a n̸̢̮̤͑̎̂̽̽̅̈́̋̈́͂̇̈̾͑̃͘̚͝͝͠ǒ̸̡̨̢̥̱͎̘͙̮̝̯̝̟̔͆̀̉̾̆́̉̍͌̒̒̎̏̀͒͜͠r̶̨̛͉̰͔̳̩̘̪͖͕̘͐̌̀̓̓̿̑̿̍͑̕͝͝͠͝m̵̤͖͕̦̯̏̒̾̊̿͑͛̉͌́͒͒̊͑̕̕͝͠a̴̳̜̠̺̞̒͋̄̎̉̀̚l̸̡̡̡̬̠͉̠̭̗̞̖̔̿̒̎̈̽̓̎̽̊̕͘͜͜͠ Tuesday morning. 

Lily Jiang went to brush her teeth. She was so focused on applying the toothpaste to her brush and scrubbing all the dirt off her teeth that she lost track of time. Upon checking her watch, she realized that she needed to be out the door about five minutes prior. She stuffed her leg into her pants, and threw a hoodie smoothly over her head. 

Lily Jiang was halfway out the door when she glanced back and saw her reflection in her doorway mirror (she’d never seen that before, why was that there?). 

Lily Jiang froze in horror, mouth agape, she let out a bloodcurling scream. It’s not that there was something behind her, but rather there was a lack of something.

Lily Jiang patted the black mop upon her head and felt its spring back smoothness. A normal hairful hairless Tuesday.

Lily Jiang collapsed on the ground in front of her house, one wheel in hand, and sobbed. Who was she? Where did it go? Was this her karma for sending that text all those years ago? Did she even have follicles?

With tears streaming down her face, she smoothly maneuvered onto her one wheel (her practice apparently still applied to this bald creature), but it was not a smooth ride. At each turn, there were cars and in each car was a glaring, shiny forehead, like a field of brilliant lighthouses. SURELY this was a safety hazard in whatever cursed society she was in and dear god why did she forget her sunglasses. The worst part is that all the creatures she perceived looked FINE, arguably even pleased in their little bald lives. 

Lily Jiang was so busy looking at the lighthouses n wheeling that she didn’t notice herself crash into a large, white truck that was driving in the wrong direction. It slammed into Lily right as she processed this suddenly, much bigger lighthouse, barreling towards her, and uttered the glorious last words: “seriously?” 

It seems Lily Jiang had finally remembered the events of her interesting “dream,” yet here she was, a suspiciously Lily-Jiang-shaped splat on the pavement. Again.  

– – –

Lily Jiangster woke up in cold sweat. She jumped up so fast that she hit her head on the ceiling before she realized that it was a n̴o̶r̸m̶a̶l̶ day. A n̴̡̪̼̝̜̙̰͍͚̲͓̼̖̟͎͇̓̌̆̃̍̈́̽̉̏̓͘͜͠͝ọ̵̢̲͍̹͙͙̒͋͐͆̊͗̓̕͜r̷̟͎̫͙̝̞̝͕͙̦̠̓̐̑͑̾̔̆̾́̀̈͒̈́̀͘̕͜ͅm̴̧̔͂̑̃ă̸͓͈̙͗̈͗̋̆̔͛̽͐̐͜͠͝l̷̙̠̦̺͓̥̥͍̦̮̂̃̓̐̎̑̋̑̌͛͂́͂̽̕͜͠͠ͅͅ Tuesday. A normal h̸a̵i̶r̷f̸u̸l̶ Tuesday. She patted the black mop upon her head and felt it spring back up. She heaved out a sigh of relief. 

Lily Jiangster remembered that she’d had a nightmare last night. The events involved her waking up in a bald world, but surely that was just a dream. Afteral, it was a n̸̢̮̤͑̎̂̽̽̅̈́̋̈́͂̇̈̾͑̃͘̚͝͝͠ǒ̸̡̨̢̥̱͎̘͙̮̝̯̝̟̔͆̀̉̾̆́̉̍͌̒̒̎̏̀͒͜͠r̶̨̛͉̰͔̳̩̘̪͖͕̘͐̌̀̓̓̿̑̿̍͑̕͝͝͠͝m̵̤͖͕̦̯̏̒̾̊̿͑͛̉͌́͒͒̊͑̕̕͝͠a̴̳̜̠̺̞̒͋̄̎̉̀̚l̸̡̡̡̬̠͉̠̭̗̞̖̔̿̒̎̈̽̓̎̽̊̕͘͜͜͠ Tuesday morning. She patted the black mop upon her head and felt it spring back up; checking twice is important. 

Lily Jiangster skipped most of her normal morning routine and started off her day in a suspiciously productive way. Something something motivation of being blessed with a head full of hair again. 

Lily Jiangster went to brush her teeth. She focused on applying the toothpaste to her brush and scrubbing all the dirt off her teeth. She combed her luscious locks out, marveling at how healthy and smooth it looked. She paroused through her closet until she found a pair of earthy, brown corduroy pants and a fluffy, mossy green sweater. 

Lily Jiangster took out her one wheel in a smooth maneuver, almost too smooth (still practiced). She cruised down the streets, focused on the road, for some unknown reason, looking for vehicles moving in the wrong direction.

Lily Jiangster was so busy focusing on the cars on the road that she didn’t notice when her one wheel hit a pot hole. Head on. 

Lily Jiangster flew through the air, landing in the middle of the road with a resounding smack that echoed through the intersection. She hit the ground so hard that she saw her wig go flying into the blue sky. 

Her wig. A wig. Lily Jiangster felt the breeze against her bare, bald forehead. Lily Jiang patted grasped at the black mop upon her head and felt its spring back smoothness. A normal hairful hairless Tuesday. Why was this becoming her normal? Hadn’t she checked after last night? How did combing through each strand not reveal the deception? 

Lily Jiangster saw her reflection in a nearby puddle and stared in shock. As she looked back up, she saw a blurry individual waving her wig around in a panic, but the words coming out of their mouth were too blurred for her to process. 

Blurred. Too blurred. Hazy. Fuzzy. White. White blur. 

A white truck rammed into Lily Jiangster in the intersection, leaving her ungloriously, without last words, but rather a last thought, “not fucking again,” leaving behind only a suspiciously Lily-Jiangster-shaped splat on the pavement.

Was Lily Jiangster doomed to stay within this hellmare forever?

Luke Witten – Baldpost 1

It is strange that we grow older.

Think about where you were a week ago, a month ago, 3 month, a year, 5 years, 10. Do you even remember? If you do, try to think not just about what happened but about why. Try to get in your own head. Say you were in a hotel room with your friends, playing BS with a deck of cards late into the night before the science olympiad or quizbowl or an out of state game. You might remember joy, laughter, a twinge of loss even for youth gone or innocence withered away. But do you remember why you were in that hotel room, do you remember why you had studied for weeks to get ready for it and why it was worth jeapardizing the whole thing by losing sleep for a few hours with your friends. Your best friends… at least then; You had felt so connected once. Why had you ever been friends? you can’t seem to remember but it just felt right. When was that last time you talked with them? when was the last time you thought of even one of them? The truth, you were never friends with them because you have not existed until this moment. your memory of them remains as vague as the memory of that person, so foreign, that you once were and can never be again. 

It is strange that we grow older.

This cannot be sad because in truth we have not lost. We can never experience loss because we can only experience the present. That is not to say we can do whatever we want: ethics exist and our actions have consequences. The actions of your past come to be in the present, and the decisions you make now will affect your future, a version of you. You will never meet them, they will never say their thanks, they may even curse your existence, but they are beholden to you. We hold the fate of this person, these people, in our hands and so our actions are real. Because we affect others there is an obligation put on ourselves. Who is this future person? Is it your best friend? your worst enemy? The ideal that pushes you forward or a prisoner trapped by your own mediocrity. We cannot know, it may not even be good to know, but we cannot help but wonder. 

It is strange that we grow older.

Will this person look back on you the same way you looked back on your past self, wistful and confused? Think about others. Think about how clear their futures are to you, but how cloudly your own remains. Think about how Aditi will graduate from Olin. Think about how she will get a job, rise through the ranks of a company, all the while maintaining her cheery demeanor and her love of video games, her love of life. She will get married one day, one day you might as well. She will live in Los Angeles or San Francisco or Chicago. One day she will move to the suburbs. It is so clear to you. She will have a child, the single greatest day of her life. A little bald bundle of joy who she will love so much. He grows, 6 months – first words, 1 year old, playing peekaboo – he makes friends with the local kids, his hair still hasn’t grown in, this is normal. Aditi forgets their anniversary – “I was buying baby clothes” – he doesn’t believe her. 3 years, doctors say it could be due to pneumonia or some epigenetic disease, still no hair, the kid loves riding around the block in his tricycle. Aditi drops her son off at preschool, he’s scared, but holding his mother’s hand he is able to brave his entry into this new world. Aditi and her husband plan a date night, its been far too long… it ends in a fight, of course it does.

5 years, no hair, Aditi hasn’t spoken to her husband in 2 weeks, she doesn’t even want to anymore, she just got a promotion, overall she cannot complain of life. 7 years, no hair, they sleep in separate bedrooms; they only stay together for the child. 8 years, he comes in sobbing, “WHAT HAPPENED TO US?”, she doesn’t know, she used to be in love but now she can barely look at the man in front of her once beautiful, still beautiful she supposes. They try to fix the marriage, they both don’t think it will work, but they want to try… perhaps that will be enough. 9 years, still separated, the child, now entering adolescence, wants to know why his parents don’t love each other. Did they ever love each other? Aditi barely ever sees her husband, he stays late at the office, barely ever spends time at home – he will take any excuse to get out of there. Can you blame him? 10 years, she is pregnant again. They prepare another room for the baby, he still has no desire to be at home. He hides his phone, he skips the annual trip to the bay for Thanksgiving this year. 11 years, the baby is born. What Aditi had suspected was true, she didn’t need a test, the child couldn’t be hers. She looked at her 11 year old son with longing and wrath, his head still spotless and shiny like the hide of a leopard seal… the baldest motherfucker you’ve ever seen. The child in the cradle, the elephant in the room that no one dares speak of, already has a full head of hair. Aditi cannot be the mother.

It is strange that we grow older.

A Review of The Wild Robot

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Disclaimer: Spoilers ahead.

The Wild Robot is perhaps the most transformative movie I have ever watched. I was talking to my good friend, Al Gore, and he told me something very interesting: “Family isn’t an obligation, but instead a choice.” I think that the 2000 election changed him. Afterwards, he never smiled and he never wept; he simply stood. He no longer thought that the people of America were his family. He no longer championed the climate for which he had fought so hard to protect or the people of the country that betrayed him.

Much like a hanging chad, his life was perpetually suspended in limbo, an uneasy balance between the death of his soul and the very alive body which so indignantly propelled him through time. I tell you about Al not to paint a tragedy but to make a point. I spent years trying to pull him out of that slump and I couldn’t do it. It took something bigger, it took someone better; we needed The Wild Robot.

The Wild Robot starts with a simple premise: what if a robot was taken out of its environment? 2000 pounds of steel and wiring is dumped in the forest in the form of Roz, and immediately the entire woodland community hates her. This cleverly references the reaction of Glen Falls, Vermont when I dumped 2000 pounds of steel and wiring there. The Wild Robot gears you up in the first couple minutes for a heartwarming story about living in a community, examining your biases, and environmentalism above all. That is not what this movie is about.

The Wild Robot delivers a series of sucker punches. The first of which is that unlike WALL-E and The Terminator, there is no sci-fi eco-fable happening; this is a movie about the struggles of parenting. Perhaps this is only shocking if you haven’t seen the trailer. When Al and I walked into the theater that Saturday afternoon, we certainly had not. It’s jarring, but it isn’t bad. You’re going to spend the next 2 hours watching a robot raise a goose. You watch Roz and the goosling grow to form a family. By the end, the payoff of Brightbill leaving the nest is earned (in a way that Bush’s presidency certainly was not).

A lesser movie would end here – not The Wild Robot. In the last half hour, The Wild Robot has no less than 3 movie-ending emotional payoffs. Al’s reaction was something to see. The first payoff hits when Brightbill migrates south, leaving Roz behind. Looking right for but a moment, I see a single tear roll down Mr. Gore’s face, the first hint of emotion he’s betrayed since November 7th, 24 years ago. 

And before you can recover… BAM!! Payoff number 2: every carnivore and herbivore in the forest has been stuffed together into a little room and they’re all attacking each other. Roz, perhaps powering down for good, makes a speech with the last morsel of energy she can muster from her fuel cells. The fighting stops, the animals lay quiet, and Al Gore texts his children for the first time in 14 years. He’s smiling – he’s actually smiling! Roz has succeeded not only in stopping the conflict in the forest but also the conflict in our beloved 45th Vice President’s heart.

BAM!! Not even 5 minutes later, they do it again. At this point I must admit that I lied earlier; this is an eco-fable after all. The Rozzum corporation attacks the forest and nearly burns it to the ground. Fighting back, the community of animals bands together against this ALeGOREy for consumerism, rampant exploitant of the environment through industrial processes, and unenlightened technocentrism. It is then that Roz says the line: “I am a Wild Robot”.

Upon hearing this, Al, who was now bouncing with excitement in his seat, simply died. The EMTs who arrived on the scene could not help as they were too transfixed by Dreamwork’s newest release in IMAX 3D. I am told that his carotid artery burst, the tragic downside of his heart growing three sizes that day.

I tried to weep but could not. Al had lived more in those twenty minutes than I had seen him live in twenty years. This is how he would want to be remembered. He would want you to know what he’d seen. He would want you to know, even if only for a moment, that he was alive.

“Chairs” In Museums

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I’m going to lose it. Look at this:

Chairs, in museums, caged behind ropes and standing lines, displayed as pieces of art. Among the petty things I care about, this perhaps makes me the most angry. If you don’t care about this yet, and you will, then bear with me as I scream this question from the rafters: why do they keep putting stuff I can’t sit on in museums? I’m disgusted.

The crux of the issue is simple. You cannot display a chair in a museum because the second you do, it stops being a chair. A chair is an object defined by action. If you cannot sit, it cannot be a chair. If the chair is durable and wide, that is part of the chair. If it is uncomfortable, that is part of the chair. And if the chair breaks after just one person sits in it, then that is part of the chair as well. When a chair is divorced from the context of its being, when you remove the mechanism that demands its existence – it stops being a chair and becomes a crude and confusing piece of abstract visual art. If a museum “displayed” a painting that you could only perceive by listening to the artist throw tomatoes at it from behind a curtain would you call it a painting? It would certainly be interesting; it would probably even be art, but would it be a painting? I don’t think so. Any designer who has had the pleasure of sitting down on something in their lives (as I imagine the vast majority have) should understand this: a seat should never be put behind bars. Function is a part of form and designing a piece of seating for a museum fundamentally denies its purpose.

It isn’t hard to fix the problem either. Most chairs are not particularly hard to build, even those that use premium materials can be adequately replicated (albeit at a lesser quality) with imitation leathers and silks. Modern furniture with particular design value often falls into this category. If it is a historical piece then it’s even easier, wood is more readily available than ever before and we certainly didn’t lose the technology to make dovetails. In these cases, a newer representation of a historical artifact would actually add to the exhibit. I promise you the Vikings did not sit in the crusty, splintered relic laid out in the exhibit, at least not in the state it is presented. “Where would we put it?” – In the exhibit, people already need seating for accessibility reasons, if your museum doesn’t have seats already then you have much bigger problems. Make a second chair. It is only through laziness that we have been forced to understand touch as a visual medium.

I have already stated my case enough to make the word chair lose all meaning. You might agree with me and you might even care, I hope you do. You might only care a little bit; I want you to care a lot. If you’re still on the fence then maybe gaining a greater appreciation for the beauty and complexity of seating could help. I think the crux of the issue here lies in the difficulty of actually designing a chair. 

If you’ve gone through your entire life, somehow managing to never feel uncomfortable in a chair, then I envy you, but have you ever tried to design a chair? Have you ever even tried to build one? It is impossible to do right. Sure, if you design in a world composed solely of 5’10”, able-bodied men, you might be able to nail down a solution. But unless you are designing crash test dummies or stocking grocery shelves, those kinds of assumptions just don’t fly in the real world. It is so incredibly difficult. People do not come in standard heights or widths, they are not all able to sit down or stand back up, and the “irregular” things that can be true of some people’s spines would shock you. What if a child or elderly person needs to sit? This is all before taking into account the environment of the object or the context of its use. The human body is beautiful, complicated, and infuriating. Designing a chair means making a fundamental piece of human architecture public; to analyze such a thing you must take into account the whole disturbed majesty of the human experience. You cannot do this solely with your eyes. You must sit in the chair. 

Here is a photo that I took at the Museum of Islamic Science in Istanbul. It is a row of imitation Wassily chairs just sitting in the lobby. This is a chair that could be in a museum but to enjoy it here is free. 

If you are an artist about to send your cool new chair to a museum or a historian setting up an antique bench for display, maybe just put in the effort to make a second one.