Momentum

In recent days/nights I've made some progress towards moving to an earlier schedule: going to bed earlier, waking up earlier. Which translates into momentum along a variety of axes. I think it's because, for me at least, morning time is just inherently more productive than night time. 

I could spell it all out for you but that might get boring. Trust me.

In the early yeats of the blog I was comfortable with very short posts and felt that by just getting something up here I was fulfilling my obligation to you, dear reader. Then somehow I fell into the tyranny of the three paragraph format. I am going to try to return to the earlier modality and just do what feels right.

Musk and Ambition

Since it was short I allowed myself to watch Musk's speech at Trump's inauguration, partially to assess his Nazi salute, which did look suspiciously Aryan. His only defense is that he didn't hold it for a second or so, like Nazis were wont to do. But still, there were a wide range of things he could have done with his hands to express enthusiasm, most of them would have offended nobody. For a guy so smart in many ways, he is often a fucking idiot.

A more substantive beef with what he says came at the end, when he exhorts us all to join him in his excitement about going to Mars, to "have some ambition." OK, sure, ambition. But I am far from convinced we should share this ambition with him. I am reminded of William Shatner's comments on actually going into space after being identified for his whole life as the space adventurer Captain Kirk. He spoke of feeling profound grief upon realizing that the Earth represented life and space death.

Musk's idea of going to Mars revolves not just around the romance of it but is based on the assumption that we trash Earth. So isn't it a far nobler and much tougher goal to save the Earth? There is the environmental component to that, yes, and Musk has made huge contributions with Tesla's cars and battery tech. But there's also the diplomatic and political side of helping humans find ways to coexist. It is a much tougher challenge, to my way of thinking, then building a bunch of rockets. It is not the type of ambition prized by the imperial mind of the Tech Male, but it is in fact what we need.

Tucking in to Pepys -- Redux

Quite interestingly, I resolved after much consideration to undertake a reading of the diary of Samuel Pepys, the famed 17th century British diarist. I just searched the blog to see if and if yes, how many times, I had mentioned wanting to do this.

And what did I discover? Not only that I had mentioned this plan, but I had already been through this process back in 2007, when I borrowed a copy of Volume 1 of Pepys's diary and shared a brief reflection about it here. Back then I judged Pepys "(not) very reflective at all... Just flat out boring." 

Well, those were the observations of the 41-year old me, father of a 7-year old and a soon-to-be-4-year old, a man with less time and less of an attention span. In my second reading of Pepys, just underway, I haven't yet seen a great deal of introspection, but there's been much to learn just in the first 10 pages or so. First off, I am intrigued by just how much time Pepys and his contemporaries spend getting and distributing cash. For some reason his role means that he has to pay some soldiers, who come to the office of his employer Mountagu, for whom Pepys served as administrator/clerk. There are all kinds of cash transactions going on, lots of toing and froing. It's a huge time suck for them, and a non-trivial security risk.

Also, they seem to eat nothing but meat and sweet stuff made of dairy, such as the sack-posset offered by some neighbor, thought to help Pepys's cold.

This time I will keep reading. I had better, after all. I now own the first volume. My guess is that it gets better and that more is revealed.

The Slaughterman's Daughter

I just wrapped up The Slaughterman's Daughter, the 2015 novel by Yaniv Iczkovits which Santa got me for Christmas. What can I say, it's a very solid read, funny, humane, redolent of Gogol and surely a bunch of other stuff I've forgotten. Ultimately it's very positive.

But it's rare for a novel that clocks in at 500 pages but isn't genre fiction to have as little ambition as this one. It's ultimately just pretty much a lark, even if it's pages are filled with a little death and no little human excrement and it's fully shot through with anti-semiticism presented as just a humorous fact of life in the late 19th century pale of settlement. It is more often the stuff of the 250-300 page novel.

Not that it wasn't a pleasure to read the extra pages. It's just curious almost that the publisher let the author get away with them. I guess it is just that much more enthralling than your average lark.

The demographics of lunch

Having lunch today in Carrboro with a friend who suggested we go to a "nice" place. We settled on Tandem. In a rare move much like the responsible small business person I aspire to be, I arrived 5 minutes early, I was looking across the room as I waited for him to get there. It was pretty full. At 58, we were going to be amongst the younger people lunching there.

I thought back to when I was working lunch in the same location at Aurora back in '89-'90. Lunch was much slower back then.

The difference, I realized, is that back then the Boomers ranged in age from 25 to 43 and that Chapel Hill-Carrboro had not yet developed a reputation as being a great place to retire. There were just a whole lot fewer people out lunching. And also many fewer people working from home or in the flexible work modes that the internet and smartphones make possible.

However you slice it, the people waiting tables today were making more money than I used to at lunch.

The limits of generics

For many years I have preferred generics to branded products where possible. If the products are more or less interchangeable, why should I pay for someone to advertise to me, I figured. Particularly since they can barely find me through most marketing channels.

I buy generic shampoo, toilet paper, dental floss, whatever I can think of. Even the generic Triscuit substitute from Harris Teeter held up pretty well after the pricing on Triscuits blew up because of fucking Joe Biden and his communist friends (Trump will fix it, for sure) So I was delighted to find that Walgreens offered generic razorblades that fit on Gillette-branded handles. Let's save a few bucks, I figured.

Bad idea. The generics are poorly engineered and make it harder to shave spots by my nose, for example. And they fall apart much more quickly then the branded ones when tapped against a hard surface. And so, for once, I will return my business to Proctor & Gamble, not because its marketing is better, but because its product is.

A likely story

For some time there has been wood in my backyard waiting to be split, rounds from a tree that Duke Power took down a couple of years ago in my neighbors yard. I had failed to split one of them sometime last year, and it had been sitting there in my yard for however many months waiting for me to come back to it.

Yesterday, I decided, was the day. So I went and got my maul and my wedge and started pounding the latter into the section of tree that had been just sitting there. However, far from having been made more ready to be split, sitting there exposed to the elements had made the damned thing more spongey, and my wedge quickly sunk into the decomposing wood. 

It was really no shock once I stopped to think about it. Problem was, I had done the stopping but not the thinking. I decided I was going to need to dig the wedge out by chopping away the wood around it, so I set to doing that. 

It was an interesting science project, and I made some progress exposing the wedge. Soon I was so close that I actually nicked the exposed wedge with my maul. Not great, but not fatal. Much of the wedge was exposed so I decided to see if I could pull it out. I could not, try as I might. 

I went back to chopping but felt a slight stinging sensation in my palm. A quick visual informed me that I had cut myself and was bleeding. Not profusely, but not trivially. My little adventure in wood splitting was, sadly, over for the day.

I went inside, cleaned the wound, applied direct pressure, elevated it, then put on a band-aid and made lunch. Before long Mary came home from her run and I told her of my little adventure. First thing she says is: "Was there any rust? When was your most recent tetanus shot?" Damn it, I thought, there she is again being right.

I looked online but couldn't find a record of my most recent booster.... The internet seemed to agree I needed a recent one.

Here we must back up. Soon after the election in November my cousin A -- a primary care physician in Cary -- emailed me and asked if I could ask our incoming governor if there was any way she could figure out whom to complain to about her lack of access to a database that keeps records of North Carolinians' immunizations. For some reason she couldn't access it and she was dependent on patients to update it themselves, never a good sign.

I didn't want to bother the governor so I asked his friend H, a healthcare lobbyist whose wife is a senior medical official for the state, if he knew anything about it. After a few days, he got back to me asking to be put in contact with A, he could get her access to the database. She was amazed and grateful.

So there I was on Saturday, trying to figure out how not to go to a doctor for a shot. I called A and told her about what had happed. "You need a tetanus booster less than 7 years old," she said with no hesitation, but then added though she didn't have one that all pharmacies did and this should be easily solved. Then she paused and said, "wait a minute, what's your birthday?" Then she looked me up in the immunization database and said, "you're good, your most recent booster was in November, 2021." 

I went back to reading my book.

Restart

I am slowly beginning to watch cat videos again.

Getting local news at the drug store

Not long ago I was talking to the woman at the register of the Walgreens I go to most frequently, the one at Franklin and Estes. She's an "older" (i.e. probably my age but I'm in denial) woman with a British accent and, most recently, hair died Blue. A good egge.

We were talking about small-time looting and she told me they got a lot of it. People came through, jacked stuff off the shelves and hopped on bikes to go down to fence it at the apartment complex across from University Mall. The cops, she tells me, know which apartment it is but can't really do anything about it. She has orders not to engage with the looters but she yells at them anyway.

Then just last week I was at another Walgreens, over at East 54. The woman at this register had a New England accent, Boston most likely, and she told me that she had left working at a convenience store out on Airport Road because it was too dangerous. There had been a shoot out while she was working there.

Now I will confess that I am not the most devout consumer of local news. I don't go every day to ChapelBoro.com or The Local Reporter though actually now that I look at it I see that the latter does have a section for crime, so maybe I just haven't been paying enough attention...

That most recent discovery has taken the wind out of the sails of this post a little bit. I'm glad there is at least some coverage of basic local news and it makes me happy that, for now at least, my financial column continues to be carried at The Local Reporter. Change, however, may be afoot, due to recent conversations with a certain Art Chansky. Also, I need to make time to write the column. This blog is a bit of a hungry hippo. I love it nonetheless and thank you for stopping by.

The End of an Era

I am gutted this morning. Yesterday we had to put Leon to sleep, after having to do the same to Rascal about 10 weeks ago. Yesterday at this time I was petting him. Now he is gone.

He was a darling cat, though he spent the first half of his life being super shy. Of course we could never figure out why. Up until Natalie went off to college, Graham and I were only able to pet him very rarely. Even if I tiptoed across the room towards him as lightly as I could, he'd tense up and then take evasive action. Natalie had gained his trust and he would come out at about 10pm when Mary was sitting in her chair and demand attention from her. Beyond that, he was a ghost. So much so that Graham's friend Ronen, who had hung out with Rascal plenty but never Leon, declared that Leon was a myth.

When Natalie left he realized that if he wanted attention he'd better take it where it was offered, so we developed a very good relationship. He spent a lot of time next to me on the couch being petted. Though even there he had the annoying habit of setting up on the couch six inches too far away so I had to strain a little to pet him. He very much liked being pet on the belly and would use one of his paws to hold my hand in place while this was going on, as shown in the photo below.

He also liked to sit on his sister Rascal, as shown below.

He was the softest cat ever, and he had the most expressive and graceful tail wag when someone was giving him some love. Natalie (thank God Natalie and Mary are better photo takers than I am!) has a video of it on her Instagram. Somehow I never thought to take video.

While Mary was taking him to the vet for the last time it occurred to me that we have never been together without some kind of small creature to tend to. When we got together in 1995 Mary had Story, a rambunctious mix of collie and shepherd ill-suited for residence in a West Village studio who, as a two-year old, considered it absolutely reasonable to stick his nose in for some action the very first time Mary and I kissed. In 2000 Natalie was born. In 2003 Graham joined the family. In 2009-10 we got Rascal and Leon. Mary and I have never lived all alone. 

Predictably, this changed dynamic came to a head last night in the process of fixing dinner when small sparks flew around food preparation/dishwasher-related issues. We got through it. We have learning to do. We can also go on trips now without thinking about finding somebody to stop by to do cat-related tasks.

We started the process of removing some cat-related stuff from the household yesterday, but not all of it. This weekend I will make space in the basement to store the stuff together. I am not getting rid of it just yet.

Reflections on another social booboo

A lovely night last night in Raleigh. After the Governor's inaugural ball was cancelled due to winter weather, a friend of J's threw a small party at his house and invited the core Glen Heights crew to join a bunch of Raleigh and Dartmouth folks, after which we all traipsed over to the gubernatorial mansion and had a peak around, simultaneously ooing and aahing and indulging our inner home decor critics. 

While we were still at the initial party I sat down to catch up with J's girl L -- whom I hadn't seen since a wedding in 2022 -- and we chatted for a bit. Before long I found myself touting my blog. On the one hand, who else but me is going to promote it? On the other hand, I walked away from the conversation not really having learned much at all about what was up with her.

All of which leads back to a couple of theses:
1. I do have more than a touch of the autism that runs in the family which in my case leads me to driving conversations along familiar rails which, in my case, all too often revolve around me. Which leads me to not learn as much about other people as I'd like when I talk to them.
2. Being around J, particularly in situations where we are celebrating his accomplishments, dredges up the old competitive urges from childhood, which again leads me to toot my own horn.

In any case, I ended up texting L my blog's address, so this could be easily remedied if she ends up reading my blog and then uses the phone functionality of her phone to give me a call.

The discipline and pleasure of leftovers

Inspired by Rob's sometimes seemingly obsessive but clearly principles-driven focus with not wasting food, I had amassed a small army of Tupperwares and Ziplocs at the office to grab food at the end of the day, and especially on Thursdays when there is happy hour with larger food spreads, to keep it from entering the greater waste stream without first transiting through a human. Yesterday, for the first time in months, I happened to be leaving just as the community managers were about to throw out a tray full of delicious cured meats (yes, I know, carcinogenic) and also some fruit. 

With that said, we are still working through leftovers from Christmas, including a not yet opened brie and some nuts that mom bought for a gathering at her condo. Also some juice/lemonade that we bought for Graham's New Year's Eve get-together (since he drinks neither alcohol nor carbonated beverages).

There is something that feels almost ascetic about working through this process, indeed about the ongoing practice of eating all leftovers no matter how boring, although sometimes they prove just too boring. Overall, it is amongst the deepest practices of enhancing enjoyment through deferral.

Self-Healing Clutter

In the last week or so I've been reading a book that Natalie had bought and left on the coffee table How to Keep House While Drowning, by KC Davis. Apparently it's a bestseller. It's a solid book written by a therapist which promulgates the idea that "self-care is morally neutral" and that people need to keep their houses as clean as they need to and no more. I get that. Certainly her play-by-play of what it's like to try to keep dishes clean while managing toddlers and the pressures of making timelines with them lest one miss nap time ring sublimely true and hearken back to a much earlier time in our lives which is now fully enclosed in sentimental amber but was at the time its own sort of crucible.

Then just this morning I noticed that Mary was managing her day-to-day tasks out of a small ring-binder notebook. For many years, she preferred an organizational system of a paper calendar but task lists written helter-skelter on a random, recycled pieces of loose leaf 8.5x11s which were strewn across her end of the counter like some madwoman's den. It drove me a little crazy and I advocated for some sort of little notebook or notepad like I used for task lists but she resisted with her trademark aplomb.

But now she's using a notebook. I will not make any sort of comment about it to her, because I certainly don't want to get involved in the dynamic of "winning" a spousal argument. Every such publically acknowledged victory is Pyrhhic at the absolute best. Let me say no more on that score.

No, what I need to do here is to consciously look for something to do better at that would make her happy and not make a big point of doing it.    

A Hazy Shade of Winter

We're looking at a grim week of weather here in NC, pretty sure it's the same up and down the East Coast. Frankly, we can use it. Time was, we had more of four seasons and -- as with most things -- it's only the absence of sun and warmth that allows us to appreciate their return.

I had other thoughts initially but somehow the title phrase brought me to the Bangles song, which is a little masterpiece. I had no recollection of the gauzy 30-second intro nor the fact that it was associated with the Less Than Zero film, which I never saw, just like I never read the Ellis novel. 

None of that detracts from the spareness of riff and drums, really one of the greatest of all time. And then the organ. The harmonies are maybe a little overproduced but still sumptuous. I'd love to see them do this live, maybe in a Tiny Desk or KEXP-like studio format so there wouldn't be a lot of crowd noise. 

A trip to the museum

At the recommendation of Mary and also, in absentia, Natalie, Graham and I took a trip to the NC Museum of Art today and took in a couple of temporary exhibitions that are about to fly the coop. We were not the only people to have the idea of going to the museum on a cold day, so it was rather crowded. Some thoughts:

• Venice and the Ottoman Empire. From this exhibition we learned that the two empires who were neighboring in the Eastern Mediterranean for a long time but with peaks in the 14th-17th centuries who alternately fought against and traded with one another. We also learned that people from both places as well as contemporary bourgeoisie like things that are exotic and luxurious.
• The Samurai. There was a lot of detail about the armor of the Samurai but I've never really been interested in that and I'm still not. There was a good timeline of Japanese history. The most intriguing thing was a discussion of different variants of Buddhism, a topic I know almost nothing about. It would be good to take a course on the history and development of Buddhism

Afterwards we sauntered over to the main building to check out the permanent collection, which I hadn't had a look at for a long time. It's a pretty good collection with some interesting stuff, the most compelling of which that we saw today is perhaps this painting of "The Worship of the Golden Calf" by Jan Steen.

To refresh your memory, the Jews got caught up worshipping a Golden Calf while Moses was up on the mountain picking up the 10 Commandments. It was not their most shining moment. Moreover, it sets up one of the recurring themes of the Old Testament, in which the Israelites again and again establish  hill shrines to one deity or another and then get their ass handed to them by Jahweh in a battle or a plague. It was a lesson that took a while to internalize. 

So this whole Golden Calf incident was not a high point for the Jews. But Steen makes it look not so bad here. People are dancing around, having fun. Yes you can also kind of tell that they are being a little naughty, and you can imagine some prim Dutch burghers looking at this and sensing that something is not right, but it's also not all bad. It has that Rabelaisian carnival charm. It's not unlike mercantile Renaissance porn. It's not like Brueggels or later Hogarth where the impropriety fairly flies off the canvass at you. 

Alignment against Apocalypse

Returning to the AI theme for a second, Mollick rightly points out in his book how important it will be for AIs to be fundamentally aligned in their values with us to safeguard us against the most apocalyptic scenarios envisioned by the many prophets of AI doom. I don't think he's altogether wrong.

The problem is that we humans are ourselves far from aligned in our values. Both between and within societies there's a broad gamut of opinions on the relative import of freedom and basic economic security, for example. Lots of people in the West see no contradiction between the two and think that freedom and general wealth production are highly correlated. Elsewhere in the world the link between the two seems far less clear. Even within the United States, there are plenty of people who don't see the connection and cry bullshit.

What we lack most sorely is credible leadership to build consensus. Until we get that, who the hell knows how AIs will set priorities as they keep getting smarter?