Category Archives: The Evidentialism Files

Unyielding

Unyielding

Tell me—
what is love if not the teeth bared,
the breath held, the earth rushing up
to meet your refusal?

What is devotion if not the leap—
not graceful, not careful,
but certain?

There is no calculation in love,
only the knowing:
this is mine to hold,
this is mine to keep safe.

And so,
with the sky against me,
with the wind cutting through,
I do.

The First VCR: Fridge-sized Fortune


In the 1950s, long before they were compact and more affordable, the earliest VCRs took up as much space as a piano and cost more than a house. We can trace the technology to engineer Charles Ginsburg, who was hired by electronics company Ampex to work on the development of a new video tape recorder (VTR). The resulting machine, called the Ampex VRX-1000, debuted in 1956 and allowed users to edit and play back recorded video on tape reels. However, these devices were humongous and cost roughly $50,000 (around $580,000 today), making them out of reach for personal use. Instead, Ampex found a market in large television networks such as CBS, which used the VRX-1000 to replace costly live broadcasts with prerecorded, edited content that could be re-aired.

The personal VCR market developed further into the 1960s, starting with the work of Sony engineer Nobutoshi Kihara, who unveiled the CV-2000 in 1965. This was a smaller and more affordable device priced at $695 (around $7,000 today), capable of recording and playing back black-and-white images. But the CV-2000 still relied on tape reels; it wasn’t until 1971 that the first VCR to use cassettes debuted. This was the Sony VO-1600, which incorporated Sony’s new U-matic technology, in which the tape was encased inside a cassette — a direct predecessor to modern VHS tapes. The retail price of the Sony VO-1600 was still in excess of $1,000. But as the technology continued to develop throughout the 1980s, the cost of a new VCR dipped into the low hundreds.

Now I want mine back.

Jasmine

Jasmine

You arrived on sticks,
tied tight,
a gift wrapped in roots and hope.

For a while, you hesitated,
unsure of the walls,
the dry hum of city air,
the way light slanted in unfamiliar ways.

But then—
you exhaled.
Stretched.
Unraveled your green arms into the open,
spilled yourself like ink across the porch rail,
climbed the air as if it had always belonged to you.

Now, the wind is thick with your breath,
a perfume so soft it bends the dusk,
lingers in doorways like an old song.

At night, you fill rooms with something like memory,
something like longing,
something like home.