Movement that unfolds over minutes, hours, or days—the commute to work, the slow crawl of a deadline, the gradual realization that the person you're dating is not who you thought they were. Medium-duration motion is the rhythm of daily life, too fast to be geological, too slow to be instantaneous, just right for watching paint dry or grass grow or a relationship deteriorate in slow motion. It's the temporal scale of human experience, where most of life happens and most of it is waiting.
*Example: "The medium-duration motion of his morning routine was carefully optimized: 12 minutes for coffee, 8 for shower, 15 for pretending to read the news while actually scrolling social media. When his therapist asked why he scheduled his life to the minute, he said it was the only way to feel in control of a universe that was, at larger scales, completely indifferent."*
by Abzugal February 14, 2026
Get the Medium-Duration Motion mug.The vehicles, tools, and systems that shape our experience of movement over hours and days—cars, trains, airplanes, and the humble elevator, which transforms a three-minute stair climb into thirty seconds of awkward silence with a stranger. These machines have redefined human experience, turning journeys that once took weeks into commutes that take hours, giving us more time to be somewhere else and less time to appreciate where we are. The ultimate medium-duration motion machine is the treadmill, which lets you move for an hour and go absolutely nowhere.
Medium-Duration Motion Machines *Example: "His car was a medium-duration motion machine that carried him through two hours of traffic daily. He listened to podcasts about productivity while being completely unproductive, trapped in a metal box, moving at 3 miles per hour, surrounded by other metal boxes also moving slowly. He called it 'commuting,' which is Latin for 'this is fine.'"*
by Abzugal February 14, 2026
Get the Medium-Duration Motion Machines mug.