Patrick Heizer

Biomedical engineer, permaculture farmer, Camus scholar, Maryland supremacy, husband, and father.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

Many new followers, so an introduction:

By day, I'm a cardiovascular scientist at AstraZeneca.

I also own & operate a permaculture farm. Since '21, we've planted chestnut, pawpaw, & more. This year we began silvopasture rotational grazing.

I'm an avid reader, especially Camus!

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

My mutual @AdrianBonenber1 stopped by the farm and was kind enough to bring me a copy of his book.

I'm excited to read it and you should check it out too!

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

@TheLincoln Okay, but what about Mein Kampf?

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

The novel that just won the Booker Prize has a lower score on Goodreads than Mein Kampf.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

My wife sent me our eldest's very first school photo and I'm overwhelmed with a sense that time is going too fast. I just want to go back to the NICU and relive it all again.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

@codechallenged 1) Do nothing and "leave" them there. Run a lawnmower over them if you want to speed degradation.

2) Rake them into flower/garden beds for mulch.

3) Rake them into a pile and bring to the compost pile.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

Remember, they are called "leaves" for a reason.

[lex @lexisoupertramp]

Big Landscaping has boomers in such an ironclad chokehold, I tried explaining to my mom that it's actually better for nature not to rake the leaves and she looked at me like I was trying to tell her fairies are real

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

@amwilson_opera A brief but fantastic read.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

#14 The Uncontrollability Of the World by Harmut Rosa

A short treatise on how one of the driving cultural forces of "modernity" is an incessant desire to make the world engineerable, predictable, available, and accessible, i.e. controllable, yet it's ultimately the **uncontrollability** of the world that allows us to resonate with it and become human in the process.

Rating: Fantastic to the point of now joining the books I frequently recommend.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

@Tyler_Menzer Are you thinking nutrient runoff into the watershed?

If so, I agree that organic material near impervious surfaces, and especially drains, should be cleaned.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

@VGrubsky Thought you were going to say use an electric mower to increase their surface area to volume ratio and speed up degradation.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

@Tyler_Menzer It's certainly not the highest leverage intervention point!

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

"Do not bow down before anything that cannot give you life. And if you have ever fallen, get back up."

Truly the Pope for our times.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Today idols arise and demand our worship: success at any cost, money, an obsession with appearance, popularity, or the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure. Sometimes, in order to win the approval of others, we may go so far as to lie, betray, or humiliate someone on social media. Do not bow down before anything that cannot give you life. And if you have ever fallen, get back up. Do not allow anything or anyone to take away the freedom God has given you. #ApostolicJourney #Argentina

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

Foul shots remain the most underrated aspect of basketball. They straight up win you games.

Every team not shooting 75%+ should be ashamed.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

#15 On the Equality Of All Things by Carlo Rovelli

An concise overview of Rovelli's thoughts about a range of topics across physics and philosophy.

Rating: Fine enough, some highlights, but wouldn't recommend unless highly interested.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

Thread: Books I've read in 2026

Written in simple prose that is both beautiful and haunting, this is the story of the life of Arseny, a 15th century Russian medicine man, a tale of magical realism and redemption that spans from rural Russia to Jerusalem.

Rating: Solid, there are truths within these pages that I understand, yet don't comprehend.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

#14 The Uncontrollability Of the World by Harmut Rosa

A short treatise on how one of the driving cultural forces of "modernity" is an incessant desire to make the world engineerable, predictable, available, and accessible, i.e. controllable, yet it's ultimately the **uncontrollability** of the world that allows us to resonate with it and become human in the process.

Rating: Fantastic to the point of now joining the books I frequently recommend.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

@Bookish_Drifter I don't know! The only options I thought of were 1) people just really didn't like the book and 2) it was review bombed for some reason.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

The novel that just won the Booker Prize has a lower score on Goodreads than Mein Kampf.

[Five Books - Expert Book Recommendations @five_books]

NEWS: "The End of Everything: A Novel" by M. John Harrison wins the 2026 Booker Prize, the UK's most prestigious fiction prize. Read what Guardian journalist Rebecca Liu, one of this year's judges, says about it:
https://t.co/huXNRAxDzM

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

Even with a broken arm, the little one insists on helping fill the trough.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

Every night after dinner, we go out as a family and do the evening farm chores. While working, we talk about our days, life, the farm, and even run around or play with the water hose.

I'm certainly not the richest man, but I am the wealthiest

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

@norabird Noticed that when I googled it and was flabbergasted. Couldn't think of another book that low.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

The novel that just won the Booker Prize has a lower score on Goodreads than Mein Kampf.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

In retrospect, this was literally one of the main reasons I developed such a deep respect for trees.

[Mark II @undonepotential]

And that the trees are VERY alive

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

@CharldonPedro @AmanitaFugax The main vector by which data centers benefit communities is raising large amounts of property tax revenue while consuming little to no local services.

Loundon County, VA, aka "data center alley," has cut its property tax rate something like ten times in the last 15 years.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

Perhaps the most radicalizing part my six years living in California was my conversion from being extremely supportive of to being extremely against direct democracy.

The median voter simply can't be trusted.

[Hunter📈🌈📊 @StatisticUrban]

The median voter... her mind...

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

@CultishCreative Yes, Camus' absurdity isn't a conclusion, but an opening to more:

"The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning. What interests me is not this discovery [of life's absurdity] but the consequences and rules of action we must draw from it." - Camus

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

Joke aside, Camus is one of the most hopeful authors you will ever read.

[Phil Hoyeck @PAHoyeck]

What your favourite 20th century author says about you:

• Samuel Beckett: You are depressed
• Albert Camus: You are depressed
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky: You are depressed
• T.S. Eliot: You are depressed
• William Faulkner: You are depressed
• Hermann Hesse: You are depressed
• James Joyce: You are depressed
• Franz Kafka: You are depressed
• George Orwell: You are depressed
• Sylvia Plath: You are depressed
• Jean-Paul Sartre: You are depressed
• Leo Tolstoy: You are depressed
• Virginia Woolf: You are depressed

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

@_eleanorina Camus structured his thought in cycles, with a fiction, nonfiction, and theater work in each.

The non-fiction work that pairs with The Plague's cycle is The Rebel.

To advance to the next cycle's fiction is The Fall.

His "Nuptials" essay series is always worth exploring.