Fernando Gros

@fernandogros

Writer Granta Memoir Workshop alumni Shortlisted for The Deep Creek Residency Fellowship Lived in 🇨🇱🇦🇺🇬🇧🇮🇳🇭🇰🇸🇬🇯🇵 Worked in academia and music TCK Made in Chile, grown in Australia, polished in Japan

1,129 Following2,902 Followers6,561 Posts

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Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Jul 16

Monday?

Photo of a GenX male sitting in a stairwell wearing the same model of sunglasses that Matt Damon wore in Ford v Ferrari.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Jul 16

Made Tacos for dinner. Not a great photo. And these were plain and rushed. But I love Tacos. And am very much in a comfort food and simple pleasures kind of mood.

Four beef tacos on a wooden board. Each toasted corn tortilla is dressed with diced beef, sliced tomatoes and cucumber, chopped lettuce, sprouts, cilantro leaves, chilli sauce and mayonnaise.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Jul 2

Dinner

Cheese board with walnuts, quince paste, red grapes, dried apricots, various french knives, disappointingly bland crackers because you can't get good oat biscuits in Australia, sliced pairs, and four cheeses, Papillon Roquefort, Queso Mezcla Curado, Blu 61, and Cheese Culture 30-month old Cloth Cheddar.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Jun 23

This is fun. I like that it ranks engagement and generosity. Get yours here: kojira.github.io/bluesky-lice... Thank you @kojira.io HT @rose.bsky.team

Driver's license style graphics displaying details about my Bluesky activity such as,

Posts 6,445 (replies 71% / media 11%)
Longest streak 123 d
Active days 977
Avg pace 5.3 /day
Likes given / Reposts 9,512 / 79
Peak hours 00–02 UTC

Also says I have 5 star Web of Trust, Generosity, Engagement, and am a Veteran of the platform.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Jun 9

Here's some sample images of the offending home library. I miss this library setup. And this home.

Home library with stacked bookcases, a geometrically patterned rug, a leather day bed, and a painting hanging on the wall.

An aggressively stacked set of bookcases.

Home library with stacked bookcases, a day bed, an armchair, and side table, dimly lit at night.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Jun 6

Life (health, commitments, etc) has kept my beloved sunset walks. But I got out today. And I'm grateful for the evening light.

Brilliant orange sun setting behind moored sailboats on a slightly cloudy winter afternoon.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Apr 6

Years ago I sketched out a "How to Use Twitter Course." My idea was to give it away free alongside a newsletter I was writing back then. The course never got built. But the mindmap shows how many useful customisation features Twitter had back then.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Mar 30

If you see this, post a concert photo you took

Leon Bridges in concert. Bridges is singing and in the frame is guitarist and back up singer.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Mar 23

90s you say

Young musician in the 90s bored out of his brain at a tedious party wearing his favourite Japanese cotton T-shirt that is 15 sizes too big and wondering how to escape this suburban hell-scape for some kind of creative freedom.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Feb 13

Here's where I exist on Bluesky. Somewhere between Tech and Science journalists and Intellectuals, Artists, and Science communicators.

A visualisation of Bluesky users in clusters representing different kinds of people. My account is sitting near tech and science journalsis, internet culture and tech enthusiasts, American intellectuals and media figures, and intellectuals, artists, and science communicators.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Feb 6

Back in Tokyo for a few hours

Generously topped Hamburger and crispy Pommes frites on a wooden plate in an basement burger joint in Tokyo

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Jan 26

I wanted to say something today about the state of social media. Then this appeared by accident as I was cleaning messages. It felt apt. If you miss “Twitter when it was good” then you probably miss conversations. Whatever social media is now it’s not a place for conversations anymore.

Black background with white text that says no conversation selected

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Jan 22

Most photogenic city I've lived in. I miss the view from my apartment window.

Broad view of Hong Kong harbour showing Admiralty, Tsim Sha Tsui, and looking out towards Yau Tong in the distance. Taken at sunset after a storm the image has a purple-ish hue and the bay is calm with few boats.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Dec 4

I don't use Bluesky the way I used Twitter, partly because I post way less often, but also because I post mostly at night on Bluesky. On Twitter I posted mostly during breaks in the day.

Single axis graph labelled "grass touching." Options are Online, Balanced, and Offline. A big orange marker is 2/3rds of the way from balanced towards offline suggesting the user doesn't post often. Below the graph some text says You're a Night Owl with 2 posts per day.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Dec 4

Surprised that Australia is my most frequently used word on Bluesky. But, I guess given how often I post about reverse culture shock, and how un-localised Bluesky is, it's not that unexpected. It's nice seeing words like thinking, reading, book, film, music, and essay featuring here.

A word cloud showing the user's mostly frequently used words on Bluesky. Australia is the largest and most used word, followed by Japan, Japanese, and film. The next level words are thinking, reading, lesson, music, book, and essay.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Nov 14

Twitter is obviously terrible now. But Twitter still has this and Bluesky never will. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A screenshot of the Twitter user interface displaying one of the many Twitter was more user friendly than Bluesky. Here were see the way search can be parsed to show results from anyone or only people you follow. And how results can be sorted by location to show any location or posts made near you.

And this is a good moment to point out that Twitter was, for most of it's life, driven by global traffic, with USA users and posts never representing more than a quarter of the platform.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Oct 23

For the sake of comparison. To scale. I love the Jimny. See them all the time when I'm in the Japanese countryside. Could imagine buying one myself.

Image comparing the actual size of an intelligently designed and super able Suzuki Jimny to a huge, dumb, environment destroying American Ford F150. One is a nimble and reliable off road vehicle that could work anywhere in the world, the other is a safety menace that reflects a failed culture.

In the image we can see that the Jimny looks tiny beside the huge F150. Almost half the size.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Oct 5

Four lovely books courtesy of Splinter Magazine's new subscriber giveaway. These all look excellent and will be part of my Spring reading season.

Four new books on the shelf in my writing cabin being watched over my a statue of a resting ballerina. The books are Human/Nature: On Life in a Wild World by Jane Rawson, Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere by Alex Cothren, Desolation by Hossein Asgari, and Fierceland by Omar Musa.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Sep 15

This meme was popular when I was living there a few years back.

Amusing chart that speculates about the different service standards of UK delivery companies. It reads,

DPD - Your parcel will be delivered by Steve, in a white van at exactly 9:23am and a photo will be taken for prosperity. There are six stops before you. You can stalk Steve by clicking here.

Amazon - Your parcel will be delivered today and if you're not in, we'll deliver it to someone else instead, like your cat. We'll make sure to let you know "Parcel was handed to customer".
You, cat, on your roof, same thing, right?

Royal Mail - We tried delivering your parcel but you weren't in. Well, you probably were, but you didn't open the door when we knocked with the force of a feather. Now you'll have to reschedule or come to us instead.

Hermes - Your parcel will be delivered at some point, by someone. Might be 10am, might be 10pm, but we'll get there. And if we don't get there, we'll say we've delivered it anyway, then deliver it tomorrow instead when you're out. We'll leave it in your wheelie bin on collection day.

Yodel - Package? Wait what? Were we supposed to deliver something today? You sure?

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Sep 7

Spent a few minutes this morning thinking about what makes a city feel stressful. Charted out most of the cities I've lived in and three where I've spent a considerable amount of time in the past decade or so.

Graph ranking cities by how stressful they feel in different ways. x axis goes convenient to inconvenient and y axis goes quiet to noisy.

In the quiet and convent quadrant, which is the least stressful for me, are Tokyo, Washington DC, and Paris.

In the quiet and inconvenient quadrant, which is pleasant but frustrating for me, is Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide.

In the convent but noisy quadrant, which is fun but stressful for me, is Hong Kong, Singapore, London, and New York.

Alone in the Noisy and inconvenient quadrant is Delhi.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Sep 1

I love this site.

Australia overlaid on the USA using the Mercator system which shows that the landmass of Australia nearly covers the whole of the lower 48 states of the USA.

Map of Australia overlaid on Europe using the Mercator projection which shows how Australia's landmass is nearly as big as all of Europe and also the way the Mercator projection makes northern countries appear much larger than they really are.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Aug 21

I vaguely remember one of his Fred Dagg specials, the one about bionic sheep, screening on the ABC when I was quite young. In my teens I picked up that album from the sale bin at a local record store.

John Clarke as fictional comedy character Fred Dagg in a black and white still from the show. Dagg is dressed in a black singlet top with a floppy hat, standing in front of an old tractor, and leaning on a sign that reads "the views expressed in the programme are bloody good ones."

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Jul 25

Had a wonderful time getting a behind the scenes look at some of the 28,000 works in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s print, drawings, and photograph collection. Also learning a little about the world of museum curation.

The temperature controlled storage room where 28,000 prints, drawings, and photographs are kept in custom built racks. Framed works are stacked on the upper levels. Everything else is kept matted in custom made Solander boxes.

A woodcut print from 1498 by Albrecht Dürer’s called Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It depicts four warriors on horseback trampling a king and his subkects. An agelic figure guides the horsemen and a strange dragon like creature is eating the fallen humans.

An aquatint etching by Francisco Goya called The Chinchillas and published in 1799. It depicts two tortured figures with padlocks over their ears, one perhaps a solider, the other might be a priest, being spoofed by a dark figure who is blindfolded and wears donkey ears.

A coastal image from an 1840 water colour notebook that belonged to the 3rd surveyor general of South Australia, Edward Charles (EC) Frome.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· May 17

I think about this quote often and it leads me to conclude that I need a t-shirt that says "hedonistic proclivities"

A book quote that reads "an informal moral code among Whites that depicted Latinos as culturally “defective,” which was used as justification for the subjugation of Latino populations. Whites often spoke of Latino “docility, ignorance, decadence, mediocrity, antagonism toward work, submission to vice, and hedonistic proclivities" from Ignored Racism by Mark D. Ramirez and David A. M. Peterson

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Mar 31

My @readwise.bsky.social streak hit 1500 today. That's 1500 consecutive days of reviewing my reading highlights. This exercise in spaced repetition has helped me remember several key ideas from things I've written and be better at remembering some of my favourite quotes.

Lightening bolt and text that reads 1500 to indicate my streak on Readwise of 1500 days.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Mar 30

Sitting at my mother’s old table in her garden. Listening to the palms bristle in the breeze. With birds chirping in the distance. While I edit this week’s writing. I don’t know how many more afternoons I will get to enjoy this place. But I’ll take every one I can.

Green palm fronds in front of a cloudless blue sky.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Mar 30

I’m on @flashes.blue Part of the promise of AT Protocol (and Bluesky) is being able to take your account and your followers with you to different social media services without the cost of starting again. Flashes is an Instagram alternative and it takes seconds to set up.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Mar 27

My next computer...

Apple's Mac site showing a retro style computer from the TV show severance, presented as if it was a current Mac for sale. The model is called the Lumon Terminal Pro named after the Lumon company in the show Severance.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Mar 13

Five years ago...

Screenshot of a tweet from March 13 where the author says,

The delivery guy looked a little surprised when I answered the door wearing a face mask & disposable nitrile gloves.

But it does beg the obvious question why delivery companies in the UK haven't adopted 'zero contact' policies.

Fernando Gros@fernandogros· Mar 10

Looking back to five years ago. At the time it felt like I was taking things more seriously than everyone around me. In hindsight I was being woefully optimistic.