Erik Vorhes

erikvorhes.com · American English

Erik Vorhes has been putting stuff on the internet since the 1900s. This is his personal site.

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Last post: Sep 11, 2026
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Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001
Sep 11, 2026 · original
Imagine a world where the response to “they hate us because of our freedoms” had been a celebration of those freedoms, where the response to violence had been confident solidarity instead of fear. What if we had embraced our vulnerability and worked to lift everyone up and to welcome the stranger? Instead we chose to respond to violence with violence — and to use the attack as pretext for unending war. We chose to respond in fear, to embrace nationalist codewords like “Homeland,” to build a sprawling and massive police and surveilance state. We’ve chosen concentration camps and arrests and deportations. There is a direct line from September 11, 2001, to Operation Metro Surge . I think about a lot of things on September 11. Today I’m thinking at least a bit on this famous line from Benjamin Franklin: Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve
Accelerant
Apr 26, 2026 · original
There’s a constant flood of AI -related stuff in my world right now — both material generated by LLMs and all kinds of thoughts from people. I’m not sure what I have to add to the conversation that hasn’t already been said, but here are a few things anyway, as I contend with a present and future that affects my own work, not to mention the livelihoods of many others or the moral and ecological harms that the relentless pursuit of LLM-enabled technologies is causing and may bring about. When I was in college, ska was having a moment. One of the bands on the scene was Blue Meanies, an edgy ska-core group from Chicago. They had just released Kiss Your Ass Goodbye! — which opens with “Acceleration 5000,” an angry song with intense percussion and aggressive horns. I was hooked. Take a listen: footnote 1 Until recently I thought this song had pretty run-of-the-mill “get excited” lyrics, stuff
Beginning again, again
Mar 24, 2026 · original
It’s been over a decade since I’ve written anything much longer than a tweet. footnote 1 This is entirely my own doing; something always felt more important, or I convinced myself that writing my thinking down was not worth the trouble. There are so many lost thoughts, and I’d like to apologize to them, wherever they’ve gone. Times — and my own determination to write things down — have changed. The push to rely on generating everything through LLMs has reminded me that the act of writing is itself an important mode of thinking, footnote 2 and there’s no better way to learn something than to attempt to write about it. This thing should be about the journey and the destination. To kick things off, I ported a bunch of things over from the family website , and I might consult the wayback machine for things I’ve lost. I’ve also included a few things I’ve thought about elsewhere, roughly in ti
On atrocities
Feb 28, 2026 · original
It’s hard to know what to say about all the terrible things happening in or created by the United States these days — disappearing immigrants in Minnesota and everywhere, covering up for years of sexual abuse, stripping trans people of their rights in Kansas, or bombing schools in Iran; the list goes on and on and on. I’m reminded of a quiet conversation from Andor , footnote 1 between Karis Nemik and Cassian Andor: The pace of repression outstrips our ability to understand it. And that is the real trick of the Imperial thought machine. It’s easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident. Footnotes “The Axe Forgets” (season 1, episode 5) back to link to footnote 1 ↩
Send help, quick
Jan 26, 2026 · original
I was hoping I’d have this site up and running early this month, but I’ve been preoccupied with the occupation of Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and the rest of Minnesota. We’re doing our best to stand up to fascism, but it’s exhausting work, and we can use all the help we can get. Fortunately Naomi Kritzer has guidance on how you can help our friends and family and neighbors.
Focus!
Feb 25, 2023 · original
One of the cool things about the hash at the end of a URL is that it can target an ID on the current page and auto-scroll the window to that point on the page. You can even use CSS to style it with the :target pseudo-class . This is a nice thing, especially on long or complicated pages. But it’s not perfect. If the target of the hash can’t receive focus footnote 1 and you hit Tab , you won’t go to the next focusable element on the page after the thing you scrolled to. footnote 2 Instead, you’ll go to the first thing on the page that can receive focus. This can be pretty disorienting! There are ways to fix the problem, though! The first is by tweaking your HTML to add a tabindex : h2 id = " footnotes " tabindex = " -1 " Footnotes / h2 Here I’ve added tabindex="-1" to the h2 element so that the heading programmatically focusable. footnote 3 The browser will focus the heading if the URL has
Contagion
Sep 11, 2020 · original
I still remember September 11, 2001, and its aftermath vividly; hell, we’re still dealing with the fallout of a response shrouded in fear and endless revenge. But these days I’m much more concerned about how around 3,000 people are dying every couple days in large part because our president* has repeatedly lied about the pandemic and hampered our ability to deal with it effectively. But what would you expect from a guy who almost 19 years ago publicly boasted (and lied) that now he had the tallest building in Manhattan and who not even 6 months ago said, “I don’t take any responsibility at all,” for his administration’s failed response to the pandemic? Once again I am reminded of Milton’s “Lycidas”: The hungry sheep look up and are not fed, But swoll’n with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.
Cosmic ray detection
May 28, 2019 · original
One of my favorite things about Abram & Zora’s school is that students are encouraged to develop Personal Learning Projects. This year Abram was interested in cosmic rays, partly inspired by our listening to the “ Bit Flip ” episode of Radiolab . So we used a bunch of household materials to build a cloud chamber, acquired some dry ice, found the darkest room in the house, and set to recording. The following video is the part that’s easy to share. All told we observed: 8 muons , 3 alpha particles , 3 particle decays , and 6 electrons & positrons .
They are sped
Sep 11, 2016 · original
Fifteen years ago I worked as an administrative assistant at an aerospace company in Grand Rapids, Michigan, while Erica was studying to become a pastor. I supported the division that wrote software for flight management computers, including the Boeing 737. It was just a job; I aspired to other things. I wanted to teach literature. So in an effort to make myself appear more well-rounded for graduate school applications, I had enrolled in an advanced undergrad class on John Milton’s poetry that met Tuesday and Thursday evenings at Michigan State University. Around this time fifteen years ago, I would’ve arrived home after class, which we still had because (in the worlds of our professor) we shouldn’t let fear dominate what we did with our lives. Most of that day was a fog. I remember that morning frantically trying to confirm what we’d heard, that planes had been flown into both towers of
‘Yolo’: Let’s get real about Latin
Feb 11, 2014 · original
There’s a pretend Latin conjugation of yolo floating around. It (probably unfortunately) got me thinking that the word form and conjugation could be improved. footnote 1 The conjugation pattern feels like it should follow that of irregular verbs volo , nolo , and malo — even more so because yolo seems to convey a sense of desire or longing. A Latin version of yolo should also probably begin with an i , as words starting with y are hard to come by. Without further ado: Conjugation of iolo, iolle, iolui infinitive tense form translation present iolle to only live once perfect ioluisse to have only lived once imperative number form translation s. ioli Live only once! pl. iolite Live only once, y’all! present indicative person form translation 1 s. iolo I only live once 2 s. iovis you only live once 3 s. iovult it, she, or he only lives once 1 pl. iolumus we only live once 2 pl. iovultis y’a

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