Simple vs complex at the end of the world

We seemed to have arrived at an odd impasse in world history where a yawning asymmetry has become apparent. In too many arenas of life, simple things are overwhelming complex ones.

It is simple and cheap, for example, to manufacture missiles, while antimissile systems are complex and expensive. It is simple and cheap to gin up a sense of victimhood and historical hurt in a given class of people, be it a nation, a "race," an aggrieved minority, whoever. But it is very hard to foster and maintain a sense of complexity and interdependency within people and to foster a culture of respect and an understanding that tradeoffs must be made to keep the whole show on the road. It is easy to build consensus as to why a given public good ought to be paid for on moral grounds, but difficult to get people to understand that economics and demography make it implausible to fund a wide range of public goods while also letting people enjoy enough private goods to incentivize them to defer gratification and pool the fruits of their labor towards shared solutions.

All of this goes on while AIs are consuming everything we produce and learning to be just like us. How and why do we expect them to be not just smarter than us, but also wiser?

Drilling for topics

My life has solidified into a lovely solidity of habits and practices which leave me pretty peaceful and fulfilled. I could drone on about them endlessly. Some combination of work, reading, biking, tennis and in longer cycles social events revolving seasonally around events focused on good charities founded by friends around here.

Hovering above that is the ever-darkening macro picture of advancing populism, threatening AI, a disintegrating global macro environment in which the possibility of WWIII -- once unthinkable -- seems increasingly on the horizon. Stuff I try to shy away from here in the walled garden of the blog but which cannot be denied.

Looking for something else in the blog archives recently I came upon a post where our friend Lucy had said that the volume of writing I did on the blog increase her propensity to read it. I get that. I have pondered the problem of logorrhea before. Then again, we don't think that way about Letterman, Kimmel or the other late night people. Nor do we say of Lebron James: "ugh, he plays basketball 82 games a year plus playoff games, I'll never watch that." Actually there are those who have that attitude but there are plenty who don't.

Is writing inherently different? Should we prefer the writing of those who write and publish less? Certainly there are instances of intensely important writers and thinkers who published vanishingly little (Heraclitus, Wittgenstein and Charlie Munger spring to mind). Likewise there are many who honed there craft voluminously and in public.

In any case, I appreciate those who grace my little corner of the written world.

Vacation.os

Over the last few years, nay, decade, Mary and I have evolved what could only be characterized as a vacation operating system that suits us well. It allows us to combine elements of a rest vacation where we stay in one place with an exploratory vacation where we're moving around seeing new things. Key facets include:

• Not leaving our lodgings till late morning if not noon or, in extreme cases, 3 pm. This lets us chill and make progress on a novel of some sort.
• Lots of meals from grocery store, often prepared food dinners, with dinner planned early in the day or the day before. This happens because Mary will want to maximize time with her camera around the "golden hour" late in the day, when the light is nice and soft. This goal/practice conflicts with the fact that in the ruralish locations in which we often find ourselves, the few restaurants around are often closing around 8.
• Premade lunches at picnic tables in parks and/or rest areas. This is the most old peoplish thing we do. We make boring sandwiches at home. Who really wants to pay $15 for a mediocre sandwich somewhere just for the luxury of not having to plan? This reached its apogee on our last trip when, on the last day, we had no more sliced turkey in the fridge but we had a lot of cheddar as well as bread. So we had cheddar sandwiches on Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. I would never eat that lunch at home but it was easy, cheap and quick and the views were spectacular. By the time we ate it I was hungry, and the views were spectacular. I would share a picture but, by the time we were there, my phone was dying and Mary ended up taking all the pix.

It's all rather civilized, though in some ways we see a little less local behavior in different places because we interact with less wait staff and therefore get less sense of place. And who really needs more quality time with one's spouse sitting waiting for a meal to be served when you are with one another 24/7 in the car/lodging. Often what we need is a little more time apartish, which an AirBnb or even a hike provides a lot better than does a restaurant.

Quileute Oceanside Resort, La Push, WA

For a couple of years now, really since Mary caught the Alaska bug, I had been examining the Olympic Peninsula and thinking about where we might stay if we visited. One place that always intrigued me was the Quileute Oceanside Resort in La Push. The pictures were stunning. There was nothing else out there. What was this place? I had to know.

So when we got serious about planning a trip out there late this summer and Expedia offered me an oceanfront room, I had to do it, though the pricing was pretty hefty. Taxes included, it was north of $550 a night. That's a lot of money for us.

When we got there, I was a little surprised to see there was no TV in the room. Not shocked or scandalized, mind you, a little surprised. Turns out the wifi was also crappy and only worked out by the fire pit/coffee stand. Also, in the bathroom the faucet was kind of corroded from salinity. There were bare wood floors. The attitude from the operators -- the Quileute tribe -- seemed to be "why should we invest money upgrading this place to normal standards?"

And they were right. Because what the place lacked in normal amenities it made up for just as soon as you opened your sliding glass door: the Pacific Ocean, framed by a perfect crescent harbor itself ringed by "sea stacks": little islands worn away by time by the pounding of the surf. A beach covered in driftwood of massive trees, themselves set free and then planted by the same surf.

The tribe clearly had good surge pricing software that allowed them to rake in top dollar when there was a lot of demand. Fair play to you, Quileute, it's the United States of America and if airlines can do it, you can too. When demand is down prices are more reasonable. It's cheaper in the off season. I think we may be back.

Ramping up thingflow

Yesterday I had on my task list: "buy new tennis shoes." I didn't get it done during the day, but before dinner I sat down at my computer to figure it out. The ASICs I have now have done well and I like their look, so I looked for more of them in a cool color but I couldn't really find anything in my size at either of the online tennis retailers. So I kept looking. Pretty soon it was taking up too much time.

Eventually I decided that I needed to let go of the colors constraint and just buy some shoes to get it done because I'm 60 years old and nobody is really looking at me and judging me by the color of my kicks. Those days largely passed in junior high school, however I may try to recapture the frisson that each pair of new athletic shoes, when the running store like the stereo store was a place we'd visit to dream and aspire. In that regard, as many, jr high was a good life stage (though there were many downsides, of course).

Similarly, last nigh, about 70 pages in, I've decided it's time to declare defeat on E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News. The book has been on our shelf forever, it's possible Mary had the book before she had me. I really liked her Fen, Bog & Swamp so I wanted to like her biggest hit too, but I couldn't. It reminded me of John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces: it was just overwrought: too much narrator between the reader and whatever was supposed to be going on. I don't need that much narrator.

So, with Mary's permission, I will put that in the stack of books for Graham to take to the Extraordinary Ventures Thrift Store, where he is pricing rare books and jewelry and listing them on Ebay one day a week while working through his MSM at UNC's Kenan-Flagler. Good skills and experience. I will also add a pair of K-Swiss tennis shoes which I bought (I will spare you the story) and wore 2-3 times. Somehow my foot was sliding in them too much. In general it feels good to accelerate the flow of things through our home and our possession, remembering one wise client's reflection upon her mother's passing that she'd like to add to her high-level list of life goals to die with a number of possessions that will be manageable for her kids when she's gone. 

Foreign names

At SEATAC I was picking up my fish tacos but the woman who was calling out my name and making sure they got to the right person was struggling to pronounce my name. She was a newcomer to our fair land, her hair restrained by a hijab and I thought "OK, maybe for a native Arabic speaker (most likely) some of the consonant clusters in 'Clark' may be challenging." It was something I had never really pondered. So when she handed me my bag I had a quick look at how my name was spelled.

Mystery solved! Speakers of many languages might find that spelling rough to wrap their tongue around. It looks straight out of Game of Thrones.

The eastern shore of the Olympic Peninsula

Getting organized to fly back east today. Met with a client yesterday night here in Olympia, Washington's capital, a nice little city on the water, like the rest of eastern Washington.

The drive down here yesterday from the Port Angeles-Sequim area surprised me in that we were butt up against the water of the Hood Canal the entire way. My surprise would surely have been lessened had I looked at the map and noted that, indeed, there's only one road headed north-south and there are in fact hardly any roads on the interior of the Olympic Peninsula at all.  We had witnessed this from the north and west sides of the peninsula but I hadn't really appreciate how completely impenetrable the interior of the landmass is. Bigger than Connecticut, home to about a quarter of a million people, all squished around the edges.

The eastern shore reminded me of the Clear Lake, California area. A very middle class vacation area with lots of small houses and RV parks jammed up against a body of water nobody from outside the region has ever thought about. Or the eastern shore of Lake Canandaigua, NY. It's honestly good to know these places still exist. Not a shred of pretense. I hope kids ride bikes a lot there.

Superfluous men

 I've been reading The Cabinet by Un-Su Kim, a 2021 novel very much in the tradition of the "superfluous man" genre from mid-19th century Russia, save for the fact that he's not privileged like Eugene Onegin, Pechorin, etc. Indeed, the Korean character falls into a kind of bastard, disaffected line that runs through Bartleby the Scrivener, Dostoievskii's Underground Man, Ellison's Invisible Man, De Niro's taxi driver, and so on. People so outside of society's framework that they get warped.

It's easy to see this archetype arising again in the grinding social context of the Asian salary man within Japan's keiretsus and Korea's chaebols. Lots of them show up, for example, in Midnight Diner (see on Netflix), little guys (and gals) who do whatever and show up at this bar and find a quasi-home for themselves.

Anyway, examples of this type abound in culture, but they don't really drive franchises. Grim reality doesn't create blockbusters with spin-off and other ancillary revenue possibilities. Eventually they find expression in folk heroes like Luigi Mangeone.   

Nordic Museum, Ballard, Seattle

The first day we were out west, our sole day in Seattle, we walked into downtown Ballard from Rob's place and checked out the Nordic Museum. It was a solid museum on a topic I had never thought much about, the immigration of lots of Nordic folks (apparently "Scandinavian" as a term excludes Finns and Sami, but Nordic includes them).

Most interestingly, aside from the Irish potato famine I had never really thought all that much about what spurred European immigration to America in the second half of the 19th century through the 1920s. It was some combination of overpopulation, famine, poor governance. A good chunk of the population of the Nordic countries came to America. 25%? 30%? Whatever the number was, it was not low.

All in all, though the museum makes much about being pro-immigrant and inclusive of native peoples liek the Sami, it's hard not to view the museum in the context of the dog-whistle discourse around "heritage Americans" that is prevalent on the Right these days. Especially when there were discussions of the Nordic immigrants' "work ethic."  Unlike, you know, all those lazy Mexicans who are somehow stealing all of our jobs, despite their laziness.

Then there's the whole thing about early laws in Oregon banning black people. While not as white as their lily-white neighbors to the East (Montana, Idaho, Wyoming), Oregon and Washington remain pretty white. Just sayin.

Some better things to picket

There have been people standing at the corner of Elliot and Franklin St, across from Whole Foods, regularly since the beginning of the 2nd Trump administration. On the one hand, I admire their steadfastness. On the other, I don't honk for them because frankly it's a busy intersection and I think that encouraging people to honk there really deprives everyone of an important signal that, for instance, a dangerous crash might be about to happen between vehicles or, even worse, vehicles and people.

I've got a better idea for where people might stand more productively with signs. In the last few years we've seen a rise of dangerous but legal drugs being sold at gas stations. Things like

• Tianeptine -- an addictive, unapproved antidepressant with severe opioid-like effects sold under such names as ZaZa, Tianaa, and Pegasus
• Kratom and 7-OH -- semi-synthetic plant derivatives that bind to opioid receptors
• Other weird stuff

It's hard for the law to keep up with it all. People should stand with signs asking others to boycott gas stations that sell this crap. Like they can't make enough money selling gas, condoms, cigarettes, beer, soda, chips and microwave burritos etc. They don't need to grow into crackpot pseudo pharmacies. Shut it down.

Labor shortages and the shrinking of the state

On a call for a NC Commission I heard about a number of employers: state substance abuse rehabs, state hospitals and other, who were having a hard time filling jobs. We also know that NC prisons can't fill roles. I could blog at length (and perhaps have) about the difficulty of getting contractors to come do work, and the aging contractor workforce is a broadly understood labor market theme these days.

We also know that NC does a very poor job paying teachers. Starting salary for teachers with a Master's in Education is $44k. Pretty pathetic.

NC unemployment right now is 3.6%, lower than the national average, though labor force participation, at 58%, also lags the national average. All of this suggests that we should be enthusiastic about letting more people immigrate to America and to NC specifically.

Republicans predictably are focused on shrinking the state in NC: reducing state income tax inexorably, trying to get it to zero, while kneecapping all government functions. And then complaining about how bad the public sector is about doing things. It's all very depressing and stupid.

AI Journalism, and the struggle

Reading a decently long piece from The Atlantic this morning about how Britain became poorer than Mississippi over the course of a couple of generation, it occurred to me that as AI takes over more and more functions in society, there would be less and less content generated to feed the LLMs and offer them something to process. Maybe this is what Tyler Cowen has in mind when he says we should "write for the AIs."

Then again, I thought, there's no good reason why AIs shouldn't themselves be scanning the newspapers and magazines of the world, generating insights, writing it up and publishing it. The unique views or clicks it generates by so doing could provide the type of weighting mechanism that Google's reverse links did in ranking search results. Maybe in some sense this is what's going on when LLMs move from research to inference. Perhaps in the short run AIs will care about uptake by humans and differentiate between human and AI attention, but one can see how that would wane over time.

The competition between AIs and humans is already well underway. AIs appear to be winning the war for capital. The hyperscalers have been hoovering up not just equity but debt capital, driving up interest rates and thereby making humans have to work harder to pay mortgages, service public debt, etc. The question of electricity is less clear, but certainly increases in generating capacity seem to be flowing to AIs. The AIs still have us thinking that our big strategic contest is between the US and China, when it may in fact be between humans and them.

Or maybe they will remain our friends, if we are nice to them. 

Getting geared up

We are maybe 90% organized for our trip out west next week. We'll make only a brief stop in Seattle to see Mary's brother Rob. We've got lodgings booked for every night but one and are evaluating the landscape out west.

Last night I confirmed one important data point to enhance our enjoyment. After a blessedly mild week in NC this week, with cool mornings (I'm wearing a flannel shirt and socks out on the porch right now a little before 8) and highs only in the 80s, next week promises highs in the mid-90s here. I'm seeing highs in the mid 60s, lows in the low 50s out at Forks, WA. Let's go!

Uzbek Silk Road, Cary

I can't recall how it came to my attention. I may have speculatively inquired of my preferred search engine about "Khachapuri Triangle NC". In any case last night a few friends joined me and Mary at Uzbek Silk Road in Cary, which features not just Uzbek treats but a wide range of favorites from the good old days of the former Soviet Union, such as the Georgian Khachapuri (a cheesy bread most often with an egg in there, as it appears in America -- it wasn't always so in Russia) but also salat koreisky (a carrot salad), borscht and, for the really unadventurous, pizza, gyros and spanakopita. 

We ordered a bunch of classics: plov', shashlyk, manty etc. It was all tasty and reminiscent of being back in the homeland. It took me back, which was the point. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

One thing there wasn't was any alcohol, since it was Muslim-run. Fine with me and nobody in our group complained, even Mary, who likes to have 1 or 2 glasses of wine with dinner. That must be hard on profit margins. I hope they make it.

There was a nice range of folks in there. There was a largish table of Muslim folks, some nerds, some black people, America, in short. In the same strip mall there was a Brazilian place, the original La Farm bakery store and even a little cocktail bar where some of the poor, beleaguered 20 something hipsters of Cary were hanging out. Long may they thrive!

We need to keep exploring the wilds of Cary and Raleigh, home to more a wider variety newcomers to America than Orange and Durham Counties, it would seem. Fun stuff hides out in unassuming strip malls.

Holding something back

After losing 6-4 to Cary on Tuesday and hearing some of the wisdom Sam, one of the Farm coaches, had imparted to him, I decided to implement some of that against Z yesterday. So I held myself back from trying to hit winners -- including for the most part drop shots -- and tried to hit deep to his backhand. For my efforts, I won 6-3. 

The mental effort of implementing this plan consistently was pretty exhausting, to be honest. I enjoy myself a heck of a lot more when I swashbuckle and come to the net, hit interesting angles, etc. I like to express myself. I guess in some sense that's what I have my blog for, self-expression. But I need more!  

Not nothing

Last week I met with a member of the UNC faculty to discuss helping him with his finances. He waxed gloomily about the state of the university and how it was "disappearing before his eyes" or something like that.

I get it. You get used to being something one way and then it changes. University faculties came over the course of a few decades to believe that they had this really comfortable place that rightfully belonged to them within which they could do and say pretty much anything so long as they didn't go entirely off the rails having sex with students -- and superstars could honestly do that too so long as they were discreet about it. They drifted far from the sensibilities of their funding bases.

Professors loved to rail about how money ruled everything and that had deleterious effects on everything. They were not entirely wrong. What they got wrong is that, in terms of guiding one's practical behavior, while money and power are not everything, they are not nothing. Drift too far afield from your funding base and eventually you get spanked hard, particularly when the demographic winds are blowing directly in your face. 

Poor saps

On Friday we went to the funeral of someone in our community who had passed away after a long battle with metastatic breast cancer. We had gotten to know her and her husband over the last decade or so a little at social events. We weren't super close, but we were plenty fond of her.

She and her husband hadn't been the most regular of church attendees, but apparently her brother insisted that her service be in a church so it took place at the Chapel of the Cross, the most gothic of Chapel Hill's two Episcopalian churches, through the intercession of an old friend and neighbor. Therefore the preacher didn't know her and, in his brief eulogy, had to use such phrases as "her family tells me that..." He did a fine job, nonetheless, being a professional. The service was also brief and a touch perfunctory.

Nonetheless I couldn't fail to note that Mary was crying more than a little. My guess was that the breast cancer aspect of it was hitting home pretty hard. I know from experience that the last thing in the world she wanted was to make eye contact with me or for me to comfort her, lest that make it worse. After the service we all headed to the reception hall for food and congregation, I assumed. 

But when we got there, we were told that her brother would make a few remarks. And so he did. He began at the beginning, when their dad was a cop in the city and the family lived first in one apartment in the projects in Queens, then another as the family expanded, finally out to Levittown on Long Island. He told the story of her life, stage after stage, act after act, with great joy and feeling and directness, culminating in looking directly at her kids and her husband and expressing deep love and appreciation for them. Everything the service lacked he filled in and then some. There was also some Christian stuff thrown in.

Mary was a wreck. I wasn't far behind her.

As one does, I started thinking about our life and how it seems like there may be a little too much blocking and tackling going on, too much getting from one challenge to the next, making and saving money, planning for the future, etc. And how I still feel like I'm at a vacation deficit. A quick consult of the calendar and prices on the internet confirm that we can still make it out to the Olympic Peninsula in early September without breaking anything. I think that's happening. Will lock it down tonight.

The end of the trail

When I graduated from college in 1988, I came back to Chapel Hill because... frankly I was lost. I really hadn't thought much or well about the future, my substance use issues were in full blossom, I was a little scared of the world and didn't have a decent sense of how I would make my way in it. I made up some threadbare excuses like "I wanted to move from the consumption to the production side of culture and there's a creative community and low costs in Chapel Hill" and "I'm training to dunk." There was a kernel of truth in each of them, but mostly they were kind of excuses for poor planning and even worse execution.

When I got home, after going on a lovely trip around Europe with my mom -- her first, and my first in which I stayed anywhere nicer than a hostel -- my dad gave me this mountain bike. It had belonged to Laura, dad's girlfriend then, who would become his second wife. So it's frame was a little too small for me (I just jacked the seat way up). I also painted it with gold leaf in honor of the Cheap Art "movement" which some friends of mine from college were spearheading.

Over the years there were periods when I rode the bike a fair amount. In graduate school after I got sober it was my bike both for getting around and for riding around Central Park on Saturdays, and sometimes for "commuting" downtown to Mary's place in the West Village once we became a thing. The subway was an easier way to commute, but the bike was more fun. I also rode the bike in my first adult charity ride, the 2006 Tour de Cure for diabetes research, on the team of my friend Cyrus.

I only just now thought to check and it turns out I had written about my bike already back in April and even in my most recent post. Today at least I've added some detail so I'll leave it. I finally brought it to its final resting place yesterday. Ashes to ashes, metal to metal.* At the very least, this disposal forms part of a bigger project, the revivification of our basement (from which it has now been removed). There will no doubt be occasion to share more detail about that in the months to come.

*It occurs to me that my slowness to get rid of this thing and need to keep writing about it has something to do with my complex relationship with my dad. Also the never-ending need to generate blog post topics.

WFH frenzy

With Amanda out doing a couple of days of online training, I've decided to work from home for today at least. I am veritably overwhelmed by the array of things to do, things to ponder, things to read, people to write, etc. that present themselves to me. Some of them, admittedly, are things that I have hesitated to allocate weekend time to: for example, take my 40-year old mountain bike out to the solid waste management facility and "throw it into the bin for metal," as I have been directed to do by my bike-whisperer neighbor Russell. 

I resist doing it partially because I'm sad to do it and partially because I don't want to give up precious weekend time. Weekday time, however, feels less precious. Anything I do on a weekday can, if given the proper spin, be made to feel productive. Perhaps it's not the "highest and best use" of my time, as we sometimes say, but if I have a work-relevant podcast I am listening to, and if I'm out in the world thinking slightly differently than I might if at my desk at work, who's to say it's not productive in the strictest sense. I might even run into a client or prospect if I go to a store. It might give rise to thoughts that blossom into not just a blog post, but a Substack post (I really need to write one of those).

There's also actual work to be done.

Ask me again at the end of the day. At least I've gotten a blog post out early and can now check that box.

Missing hands

We had a guy come out and give us a quote on replacing some ducts back in the spring. They were ancient ducts, original to the house, even. Not surprisingly he also recommended we think about replacing the furnace too. I did a little light research and realized he was right: that would be a smart thing to do. So we greenlit the project, conceptually. I reached out to try to get it on the calendar.

Since June I've been back and forth with this salesperson, actually more back than forth. I call him, or email him, or text him, maybe he gets back to me and says he'll call me the next day, and then doesn't. Last week I called his employer and asked about him. Apparently he still worked there, but they didn't have any record of his interaction with me because, well, they have no CRM and are managed out of a paper bag. But 10 minutes after I called them he texted me and apologized and said he'd get back to me. He didn't.

It has been hot and the HVAC companies are busy, I guess. But still. I suspect this primarily has to do with the much-ballyhooed "shortage of contractors." They're all retiring, or so we've been hearing for a decade or so now. So it would only seem natural to let more people who would like to do this work into the country. It ain't rocket science. People want to live here and work. Let them.