A philosophy professor told me he had a couple of Buddhist friends who were "very, very close to waking up." I asked him to visualize a scenario:
You're asleep, dreaming, when someone raises the notion of waking up. How interesting! So you attend a meeting of the Waker-Uppers, where the teachers, you're informed, are really close to awakening. These experts offer profound wisdom, and their placid, smug demeanors assure you that they're onto something super deep.
But just as you're captivated, a persistent buzzing abruptly intrudes. You open your eyes, slap your alarm clock, and trudge to the bathroom to pee.
So, those guys in the dream who were very close to waking up—what sort of timeframe are we talking? Weeks, months, or years?
Friday, February 28, 2025
Thursday, February 27, 2025
Air Fryer Chestnuts
Everyone feels like a chestnut expert because they make them once per year for stuffing or whatever and it's a family tradition or whatever. They confuse familiarity with expertise.
I've made chestnuts almost 50 times this year alone (they're cheap and great here), and I've refined my method to perfection. I won't explain why I don't soak them, or parboil them, or salt them, or any of the other unnecessary and counterproductive moves people do. Just trust me.
Preheat your air fryer 400
"But Jim, air fryers don't really fry, they're just a convection oven!"Put chestnuts in a deep bowl full of water (more than you think necessary) and discard any floaters. Drain the water.
Correct. But they're really good, handy, economical, windy, and self-contained convection ovens, perfect for chestnuts. You can do this recipe in a real convection oven, but it won't work as well. Buy a small air fryer (I have this, and when the silicon bumpers wear away I suggest you buy a new air fryer). You'll never use your toaster oven again, and you'll hardly ever use your convection oven. Just run it 15 times outdoors to burn off rubber and plastic manufacturing artifacts without turning your kitchen into Love Canal.
Use a serated steak knife or bread knife to slash an "X" on the flattest side of each chestnut. Don't go too deep if you can help it.
Place in preheated air fryer, cut side down. Set it for 20 minutes.
Cook 5 minutes.
Shake tray violently. The chestnuts will flip to cut side up.
Cook 5 minutes.
If you shake them, they won't flip. They'll just sort of move around. So you must laboriously and painfully flip each chestnut with your fingers (cooking gloves, tongs, etc., won't work) back to cut side down. Just this one time.
Cook 5 minutes
Shake tray violently. The chestnuts will flip to cut side up.
Cook 5 minutes
Dump chestnuts into a dishtowel, double it over, and press firmly downward with your palms, trying to press each chestnut solidly at least once. This loosens the skins.
Cooking over charcoal is better, but not as much better as you think, so probably not worth the extra effort. And if your charcoal method doesn't allow smoke penetration, it's not better at all. If you master the air fryer technique, you will not yearn for charcoal.
Eating notes:
Eat them hot. Don't let them sit.
Most of the skins will come off effortlessly. But for stubborn patches, don't scrape. Just push your fingertip directly down hard on any lingering skin. It will crunch (like with the dish towel), wrinkle and detach, easy to flick off with another finger. For larger patches of stubborn skin, squeeze the nut between thumb and index finger, then flick off skin with your other hand.
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Trump in Context
Donald Trump has long seethed at his perceived mistreatment. Despite all the fame, money, and power one could hope for, his experience is less than perfect perfection. The affirmation and submission fall short of full-throated unanimity, and his ride remains outrageously, maddeningly, mildly bumpy.
This stance is not qualitatively different from that of other Americans, who, almost without exception, feel aggrieved, victimized, and underserved while living unimaginably safe, comfortable, pampered, entertained existences here in Utopia. We feel we deserve better, so lingering irritations leave us peevishly put-upon.
Trump and his followers are eager to tear it all down to spite "those bastards"—the faceless victimizers. But most everyone seethes at faceless bastards earmarked for spiting. The only difference is branding. Memes and hats. Everywhere one looks, people seem ready to burn things down given the right trigger words from the right tyrant sending the right tribal signals. Listen to Bernie Saunders speeches circa 2015, where he promised - with populist fire - sweeping, tectonic changes to institutions, while crowds roared appreciatively.
Once again, it's a huge tell that we spend every New Year's Eve kicking the preceding year in its ass. In my 62 years, not one has passed muster, even as we've traced a line of elevation our ancestors could never have imagined. The better things get, the worse it all feels. It's the perennial lot of aristocrats. Living within tantalizing reach of perfection makes petty shortfalls seem prosecutorial, and our pique must be placated! The fate of every princess is to be increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas.
Trump is not aberrational. Just a bit extreme.
Maybe not even. Maybe he just got a shot at it.
This stance is not qualitatively different from that of other Americans, who, almost without exception, feel aggrieved, victimized, and underserved while living unimaginably safe, comfortable, pampered, entertained existences here in Utopia. We feel we deserve better, so lingering irritations leave us peevishly put-upon.
Trump and his followers are eager to tear it all down to spite "those bastards"—the faceless victimizers. But most everyone seethes at faceless bastards earmarked for spiting. The only difference is branding. Memes and hats. Everywhere one looks, people seem ready to burn things down given the right trigger words from the right tyrant sending the right tribal signals. Listen to Bernie Saunders speeches circa 2015, where he promised - with populist fire - sweeping, tectonic changes to institutions, while crowds roared appreciatively.
Once again, it's a huge tell that we spend every New Year's Eve kicking the preceding year in its ass. In my 62 years, not one has passed muster, even as we've traced a line of elevation our ancestors could never have imagined. The better things get, the worse it all feels. It's the perennial lot of aristocrats. Living within tantalizing reach of perfection makes petty shortfalls seem prosecutorial, and our pique must be placated! The fate of every princess is to be increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas.
Trump is not aberrational. Just a bit extreme.
Maybe not even. Maybe he just got a shot at it.
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
A Declaration of War on Russia
The Europeans are stepping up, thank goodness (per my fervant prayer two weeks ago). The heads of state of Europe and Canada have gathered en masse in Kiev, a powerful gesture, but they need to go further faster. They must get ahead of the conflict, not merely catch up. My suggestion:
A Declaration of War on Russia
by The Nations of Europe (sans Hungary and Belarus) and Canada
Dear Mr. Putin
For three years we have watched in horror as you've attempted to exterminate your neighbor, raping its women and kidnapping its children. You've targeted the old, the sick, and the children in the most blatant, ambitious, and persistent series of war crimes since the Third Reich.
We recognize that you won't stop at Ukraine. You've revealed your thirst to cast a new Iron Curtain over our continent, re-enslaving Moldavia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, etc. This is unacceptable in 21st century Europe. You are a frightful relic, and we are determined to cast you into dusty obsolescence alongside other shamed remnants of humanity's barbaric adolescence.
The last time we were forced to repel a deluded madman, we fought an enemy with a seemingly inexorable thrust of momentum. Not so this time. Those Russians you've not yet blithely sent into slaughter are in no way swept up by your mania. This is all just you, an old, weak, demonic ghoul with an economy in shambles, entirely motivated by the desperation to avoid the fate of vanquished dictators. This isn't like last time. This is the baby version. Tricycles, not blitzkriegs. Our spines are straight, but our fear is minimal.
You will rattle your nuclear saber. We will not do likewise, as terror is your brand, not ours. But know that we've poised our thumbs above the launch buttons.
You will hack us. We will hack you back, and if you annoy us sufficiently, we will put boots on the ground in Ukraine and in the glorious new Ukrainian province of Kursk.
We will sink your spy/sabotage ships on sight and aggressively thwart your black fleet of sanctions evaders. We will blockade you, transfer your frozen assets to Ukraine, and invest our substantial wealth and energies to supporting, and, if necessary, fighting alongside, our brave Ukrainian allies, whom we welcome into EU and NATO.
We and our countrymen love Russia, the sons and daughters of Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy. We love the Russian people and look forward welcoming them into peace, wealth, and security once we've defeated the trillionaire kleptocrat who's impoverished and slaughtered them.
We'd like to highlight the participation of your formerly neutral neighbors Sweden and Finland, whom you've stupidly pushed into NATO's arms. As you shrink, NATO has grown. Your misadventure will soon cease, your regime will crumble, and your personal wealth will be returned to the people from whom you stole it (by our calculation, it translates to $7000 per Russian citizen).
Goodbye, Mr. Putin. And hello, free and peaceful Europe and Eurasia.
Monday, February 24, 2025
Pig Butchering and Late Stage Capitalism
Scam, Inc is a fascinating Economist podcast (subscribers only) on Pig Butchering - a "high-touch" scam where enormous time, effort, infrastructure, and assets go into reeling in a mark and taking them for all they're worth.
This is not the usual story of hoodlums preying on the gullible. It's a whole other level from, say, Nigerian email scams. Those are primitive smash-and-grabs compared with the artistry of Pig Butchering, which hoodwinks sophisticated, highly educated people because its procedures have been honed to perfection, powerfully supported, and constantly improved via AI.
The scam itself isn't the interesting part. At its heart, it's the age-old con, though masterfully executed. What's amazing is the infrastructure. Whole cities have been built in the Burmese jungle (and are spreading worldwide) to support the effort. They employ - or traffic - workers for security, crypto, AI, medical, logistics, and so forth. It all operates on the same model as huge corporations, but the business plans are a bit more shamefully/illegally deceptive.
"A bit more...." sounds like understatement, but consider that every business is a contrivance to separate you from your money, and not all of them even purport to return tangible value. Casinos and insurance companies, for example, intrinsically avoid returning value. So it's a finer line than you might imagine.
To illustrate the sophistication of these operations, the front-line operators don't front behind photos from the Internet. The "hot" guys and gals in the photos actually exist in-house, and stand by, if needed, for corroborative photos or video chats. They're on payroll. Everyone's on payroll. This is nth level scamming at the scale, and culture, of multinational corporations.
The lowest level employees, who painstakingly engage the victims, are more victimized than their marks. They're human-trafficked under false pretense, work for slave wages and can't leave without reimbursing exorbitant "expenses". Above them in the heirarchy are myriad employees simply doing their jobs. They're not gangsters missing fingers, kicking ass in alleyways. They're clerks, database jockeys, payroll accountants, middle managers, etc., all behaving as they would in any corporation. Normal!
So who are the super villains? The top guys?
No, the top guys are chortling "bros" indistinguishable from investment bankers, hedgies, crypto moguls or real estate developers. The others in that circle enjoy a patina of propriety despite widespread acknowledgement of their shameless and remorseless practices, and the scam moguls exist in the same world of ROI, liquidity, and other frosty biz concepts. It's built on a scam, but "scam" is a fungible concept.
No one needs to crack heads because the industry is so large (high billions, and well on-track for trillions) that wholesale use of violence is unnecessary. Workers do try to escape, but are mostly not maimed to be made examples of. They're written off as shrinkage. And even straight mega corps can be oppressive to work for. It's not so easy to escape from Walmart, either! The line to slavery - like "scamming" - has blurred.
This is nothing terribly new. Traditional gangsters became more businesss-like generations ago. MBAs capable of violence, ala Michael Corleone. But hard violence becomes largely unnecessary with limitless scale, power, and assets. And to see how lines of propriety can blur, consider the gangster state of Russia, where billionaire oligarch/mobsters are perfectly business-like, their minions educated and competent, and only at the lowest level lie the hoodlums.
The industry of Pig Butchering has, with a deft snip, removed the hoodlums. It's run like a business by businessmen indistinguishable from other sorts of business, operating, naturally, on crypto currency, and risk is managed to the point where arrests and fines - like escaped slave/workers - are chalked up to what shop owners would call "shrinkage". Many industries pay fines in lieu of compliance. Again: blurred lines.
We've arrived at a future that was easy to anticipate. Capitalism has grown immeasurably more brutal, shameless, and tunnel-visioned in my lifetime. Studying urban buildings from the 1940s, it's impossible to imagine a time when architects and builders fussed over fine details simply for purpose of aesthetics and pride. To contemporary eyes, this seems like insane inefficiency. A daft misuse of time and resources. Where's the return on investment???
Capitalism is a game with two simple rules: maximize revenue and minimize expense. The accelerative nature of the gameplay - goosed by competition and stoked with tech and marketing advances - made it inevitable for reasonable considerations to be abandoned in the end sprint. And we're clearly in a late stage when terms like "scam" and "slavery" get blurry and unrenumerative fine touches become unthinkable.
Denouement concerns aside, humanity has devised no better system for coaxing innovation (we're blessed with indoor plumbing, antibiotics, artificial lighting, etc.) and generating wealth (despite our whining, we live like kings compared to our great-grandparents, and like gods compared to their great-grandparents). But, like every other system, capitalism always fails in the long term, and this one fails via runaway process. A competitive system built upon the alluring simplicity of two blunt imperatives ensures a final scramble impervious to nuance, moderation, or moral reflection. It all goes beserk. Inhuman.
Try it for yourself, via the classic game Universal Paperclips.
This is not the usual story of hoodlums preying on the gullible. It's a whole other level from, say, Nigerian email scams. Those are primitive smash-and-grabs compared with the artistry of Pig Butchering, which hoodwinks sophisticated, highly educated people because its procedures have been honed to perfection, powerfully supported, and constantly improved via AI.
The scam itself isn't the interesting part. At its heart, it's the age-old con, though masterfully executed. What's amazing is the infrastructure. Whole cities have been built in the Burmese jungle (and are spreading worldwide) to support the effort. They employ - or traffic - workers for security, crypto, AI, medical, logistics, and so forth. It all operates on the same model as huge corporations, but the business plans are a bit more shamefully/illegally deceptive.
"A bit more...." sounds like understatement, but consider that every business is a contrivance to separate you from your money, and not all of them even purport to return tangible value. Casinos and insurance companies, for example, intrinsically avoid returning value. So it's a finer line than you might imagine.
To illustrate the sophistication of these operations, the front-line operators don't front behind photos from the Internet. The "hot" guys and gals in the photos actually exist in-house, and stand by, if needed, for corroborative photos or video chats. They're on payroll. Everyone's on payroll. This is nth level scamming at the scale, and culture, of multinational corporations.
The lowest level employees, who painstakingly engage the victims, are more victimized than their marks. They're human-trafficked under false pretense, work for slave wages and can't leave without reimbursing exorbitant "expenses". Above them in the heirarchy are myriad employees simply doing their jobs. They're not gangsters missing fingers, kicking ass in alleyways. They're clerks, database jockeys, payroll accountants, middle managers, etc., all behaving as they would in any corporation. Normal!
So who are the super villains? The top guys?
No, the top guys are chortling "bros" indistinguishable from investment bankers, hedgies, crypto moguls or real estate developers. The others in that circle enjoy a patina of propriety despite widespread acknowledgement of their shameless and remorseless practices, and the scam moguls exist in the same world of ROI, liquidity, and other frosty biz concepts. It's built on a scam, but "scam" is a fungible concept.
No one needs to crack heads because the industry is so large (high billions, and well on-track for trillions) that wholesale use of violence is unnecessary. Workers do try to escape, but are mostly not maimed to be made examples of. They're written off as shrinkage. And even straight mega corps can be oppressive to work for. It's not so easy to escape from Walmart, either! The line to slavery - like "scamming" - has blurred.
This is nothing terribly new. Traditional gangsters became more businesss-like generations ago. MBAs capable of violence, ala Michael Corleone. But hard violence becomes largely unnecessary with limitless scale, power, and assets. And to see how lines of propriety can blur, consider the gangster state of Russia, where billionaire oligarch/mobsters are perfectly business-like, their minions educated and competent, and only at the lowest level lie the hoodlums.
The industry of Pig Butchering has, with a deft snip, removed the hoodlums. It's run like a business by businessmen indistinguishable from other sorts of business, operating, naturally, on crypto currency, and risk is managed to the point where arrests and fines - like escaped slave/workers - are chalked up to what shop owners would call "shrinkage". Many industries pay fines in lieu of compliance. Again: blurred lines.
We've arrived at a future that was easy to anticipate. Capitalism has grown immeasurably more brutal, shameless, and tunnel-visioned in my lifetime. Studying urban buildings from the 1940s, it's impossible to imagine a time when architects and builders fussed over fine details simply for purpose of aesthetics and pride. To contemporary eyes, this seems like insane inefficiency. A daft misuse of time and resources. Where's the return on investment???
Capitalism is a game with two simple rules: maximize revenue and minimize expense. The accelerative nature of the gameplay - goosed by competition and stoked with tech and marketing advances - made it inevitable for reasonable considerations to be abandoned in the end sprint. And we're clearly in a late stage when terms like "scam" and "slavery" get blurry and unrenumerative fine touches become unthinkable.
Denouement concerns aside, humanity has devised no better system for coaxing innovation (we're blessed with indoor plumbing, antibiotics, artificial lighting, etc.) and generating wealth (despite our whining, we live like kings compared to our great-grandparents, and like gods compared to their great-grandparents). But, like every other system, capitalism always fails in the long term, and this one fails via runaway process. A competitive system built upon the alluring simplicity of two blunt imperatives ensures a final scramble impervious to nuance, moderation, or moral reflection. It all goes beserk. Inhuman.
This is the closest I'll get to empathizing with the global movement toward authoritarianism. While I grant that capitalism is past its sell-by date, tyranny isn't a worthy alternative.If you were to seek maximal profit from paperclip production, disregarding all other considerations (e.g. prudence, rationality, humanism), and went about it with maximal intensity, you'd eventually convert the entire mass of the Universe into paperclips. As with compound interest, the daunting outcome sneaks up on you in defiance of all intuition.
Try it for yourself, via the classic game Universal Paperclips.
Sunday, February 23, 2025
The Psychology of Iteration
First one.
I don't expect this to be good. It won't magically turn out well just because it's wonderful me doing it, so no "hey, everybody, come see what I did!" I am not blind to truth. I know this will suck. I expect it to suck. And it's ok! It's a process!
Second one.
The most gaping problem from last time has been fixed. Well, improved. I'm no longer making that big mistake, but I'm making lots of smaller ones. And I'm noticing because I am not blind to truth. I don't expect this to be good.
Third one
The original problem has been improved to the point where it does not stick out particularly among the 1000 suboptimalities most people would never notice. But I'm getting a feel for the mechanics. No longer completely lost in procedure, I have the mental spaciousness to begin asking questions. Gears spin. Not many answers yet. And I don't expect this to be good.
Fourth one.
Churning away on questions has begun to produce hypotheses and brainstorms. Experimentation. "Will this help?" Most don't work, some backfire, and perhaps one hits...but not quite like I wanted it to. I don't expect this to be good.
Fifth one.
I'm thinking less, yet, paradoxically, scheming more. The questions churn subconsciously, even during other activities. Successful adjustments are remembered - I'm raptly in love with them, so how could I forget? Using my awareness more than my calculating intelligence, attention locks onto shortfalls like an insomniac in a bedroom with a mosquito. I don't expect this to be good.
Sixth one
Some bits of satisfaction, but each solution creates new problems at 1/10 scale. It's all fractal, both in result and in my assessment (the better it gets, the more glaring the shortfalls appear). I make adjustments without needing to match action to result. Persistent awareness of problems (the mosquito!) automatically drives procedural shifts as mechanics become more comfortably second nature. But I don't expect this to be good.
Seventh one.
Around this point, there's a flip. I'm no longer seethingly obsessed with problems - "pushed" by my results. I'm more enticed by how it might ideally turn out - "pulled" by my imagination. Less vexation, more eagerness. But I don't expect this to be good.
Eighth one.
Forget what I said. All eagerness is gone. This, alas, is a "whack-a-mole". A mess of unintended consequences that only worsens with repair. I've lost all control. I'm back to extinguishing bad results. I sure as fuck do not expect this to be good.
Ninth one
Extinguishing bad results. I sure as fuck do not expect this to be good.
Tenth one
Extinguishing bad results. I sure as fuck do not expect this to be good.
Eleventh one
Extinguishing bad results. I sure as fuck do not expect this to be good.
Twelfth one
Extinguishing bad results. I sure as fuck do not expect this to be good.
Thirteenth one.
I've purged most of the unintended results, but the thing itself is now just blah. Meh. Nothing. I've lost both eagerness and irritation, and am just rotely doing whatever I did the previous time while hoping for better results. In other words: Madness! I don't expect this to be good.
Fourteenth one
Madness!
Fifteenth one
Madness!
Sixteenth one
Madness!
Seventeenth one
Madness!
Eighteenth one
Madness!
Nineteenth one
My dissatisfaction rekindled seething obsession, which finally produced a eureka - a breakthrough idea of how I might do things easier and better. Nothing ingenious from afar; I mostly just removed useless stupidity. And it changes everything. But I need to develop it! Back to....
First one.
I know this will suck. And it's ok! It's process!
Two Followup Notes
1. A sculpture teacher ended classes by chucking every student’s clay masterpiece straight back into the raw clay barrel. They flipped out, but a handful were cured of mental malady and, even as they blossomed into accomplished artists, never expected anything to be good. The blossoming and the shift of perspective were not unrelated.
2. From "Should You Go to Cooking School?":
I don't expect this to be good. It won't magically turn out well just because it's wonderful me doing it, so no "hey, everybody, come see what I did!" I am not blind to truth. I know this will suck. I expect it to suck. And it's ok! It's a process!
Second one.
The most gaping problem from last time has been fixed. Well, improved. I'm no longer making that big mistake, but I'm making lots of smaller ones. And I'm noticing because I am not blind to truth. I don't expect this to be good.
Third one
The original problem has been improved to the point where it does not stick out particularly among the 1000 suboptimalities most people would never notice. But I'm getting a feel for the mechanics. No longer completely lost in procedure, I have the mental spaciousness to begin asking questions. Gears spin. Not many answers yet. And I don't expect this to be good.
Fourth one.
Churning away on questions has begun to produce hypotheses and brainstorms. Experimentation. "Will this help?" Most don't work, some backfire, and perhaps one hits...but not quite like I wanted it to. I don't expect this to be good.
Fifth one.
I'm thinking less, yet, paradoxically, scheming more. The questions churn subconsciously, even during other activities. Successful adjustments are remembered - I'm raptly in love with them, so how could I forget? Using my awareness more than my calculating intelligence, attention locks onto shortfalls like an insomniac in a bedroom with a mosquito. I don't expect this to be good.
Sixth one
Some bits of satisfaction, but each solution creates new problems at 1/10 scale. It's all fractal, both in result and in my assessment (the better it gets, the more glaring the shortfalls appear). I make adjustments without needing to match action to result. Persistent awareness of problems (the mosquito!) automatically drives procedural shifts as mechanics become more comfortably second nature. But I don't expect this to be good.
Seventh one.
Around this point, there's a flip. I'm no longer seethingly obsessed with problems - "pushed" by my results. I'm more enticed by how it might ideally turn out - "pulled" by my imagination. Less vexation, more eagerness. But I don't expect this to be good.
Eighth one.
Forget what I said. All eagerness is gone. This, alas, is a "whack-a-mole". A mess of unintended consequences that only worsens with repair. I've lost all control. I'm back to extinguishing bad results. I sure as fuck do not expect this to be good.
Ninth one
Extinguishing bad results. I sure as fuck do not expect this to be good.
Tenth one
Extinguishing bad results. I sure as fuck do not expect this to be good.
Eleventh one
Extinguishing bad results. I sure as fuck do not expect this to be good.
Twelfth one
Extinguishing bad results. I sure as fuck do not expect this to be good.
Thirteenth one.
I've purged most of the unintended results, but the thing itself is now just blah. Meh. Nothing. I've lost both eagerness and irritation, and am just rotely doing whatever I did the previous time while hoping for better results. In other words: Madness! I don't expect this to be good.
Fourteenth one
Madness!
Fifteenth one
Madness!
Sixteenth one
Madness!
Seventeenth one
Madness!
Eighteenth one
Madness!
Nineteenth one
My dissatisfaction rekindled seething obsession, which finally produced a eureka - a breakthrough idea of how I might do things easier and better. Nothing ingenious from afar; I mostly just removed useless stupidity. And it changes everything. But I need to develop it! Back to....
First one.
I know this will suck. And it's ok! It's process!
Two Followup Notes
1. A sculpture teacher ended classes by chucking every student’s clay masterpiece straight back into the raw clay barrel. They flipped out, but a handful were cured of mental malady and, even as they blossomed into accomplished artists, never expected anything to be good. The blossoming and the shift of perspective were not unrelated.
2. From "Should You Go to Cooking School?":
However good you are now, get way, way better, and then, when you're certain you're good enough, get way, way better still. And then get better. Finally, realize you absolutely suck and triple it. Don't wait for an authority figure to goad you into improvement. Make it happen as a matter of survival.
Not that this requires further clarification, but don’t stop improving when people around you start telling you you’re awesome. That happens at the beginning of this cycle. When friends and family start gasping in admiration, that means you’re like one single notch above completely sucking.
Thursday, February 20, 2025
The “Golden Rule” is Loftily Unattainable!
This is a rather unsophisticated observation, but it took me the better part of a century to fully grok the obvious truth. As it's gradually revealed itself over the years, I've remarked, again and again, "I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad!" and, hallelujah, I've finally touched bottom. I see precisely how bad it is.
Here's your final assessment, humanity, with thanks for the lasagna.
People who behave badly usually don't know they've behaved badly and hadn't intended to. In fact, they'd be surprised to hear it—though they wouldn't believe it, and would react (unsurprisingly) badly.
There is a fundamental narcissistic skew whose severity is far worse than suspected. We only miss it because we're too narcissistic to register how extremely narcissistic everyone is. That plus the suspension of social disbelief prevents us from paying attention to social bedrock we were never supposed to examine. It's "behind the curtain" stuff, however absurdly ill-concealed.
People treat others in ways they'd bitterly complain about if they were on the receiving end. But it's not because they're inconsiderate shitheads. Well—wait, they absolutely are inconsiderate shitheads, but my point is that they're not trying to be inconsiderate shitheads. It's that they feel distinctive, so there's no reason to link or contrast outbound and inbound treatment. The two are unrelated, because they're THEM, while you're just you.
And—this part is critical, and also the sole consolation—that's not a judgment or a deliberate insult. It does not reflect on you (it only seems so because you feel distinctive, yourself). Rather, it's based on an intrinsic skew. They're as unaware of it as a fish is of water, or a polar bear of the cold. They truly don't know.
When the Bible suggested doing to others as you would have them do to you, it turns out this wasn't a helpful reminder. I always figured it was like "Sit up straight" or "Eat more vegetables"—a sappy homily people sometimes need reinforced, despite its blatant obviousness.
No. I see now that it was flabbergasting existential judo—a Copernican flip of perspective. And it was received as a lofty principle which, like other forms of godliness, could only be aspired to, and never put into actual practice.
This explains why a sappy 1960s self-help book proposing a mild step further ("I'm OK – You're OK") was even more paradigm-flipping and gasp-inducing, and became a giant best-seller, though it struck me, even as a small child, as ludicrously banal.
No. That was the heavy advanced shit.
Here's a cheerful re-framing: One can normally walk down the street without being clubbed over the head and robbed or raped. Things are vastly better than in pre-civilization days, and we're incomparably more considerate and empathic than the animal kingdom we recently crawled out of. So just adjust your expectations and it will all be fine.
Here's your final assessment, humanity, with thanks for the lasagna.
People who behave badly usually don't know they've behaved badly and hadn't intended to. In fact, they'd be surprised to hear it—though they wouldn't believe it, and would react (unsurprisingly) badly.
There is a fundamental narcissistic skew whose severity is far worse than suspected. We only miss it because we're too narcissistic to register how extremely narcissistic everyone is. That plus the suspension of social disbelief prevents us from paying attention to social bedrock we were never supposed to examine. It's "behind the curtain" stuff, however absurdly ill-concealed.
People treat others in ways they'd bitterly complain about if they were on the receiving end. But it's not because they're inconsiderate shitheads. Well—wait, they absolutely are inconsiderate shitheads, but my point is that they're not trying to be inconsiderate shitheads. It's that they feel distinctive, so there's no reason to link or contrast outbound and inbound treatment. The two are unrelated, because they're THEM, while you're just you.
And—this part is critical, and also the sole consolation—that's not a judgment or a deliberate insult. It does not reflect on you (it only seems so because you feel distinctive, yourself). Rather, it's based on an intrinsic skew. They're as unaware of it as a fish is of water, or a polar bear of the cold. They truly don't know.
When the Bible suggested doing to others as you would have them do to you, it turns out this wasn't a helpful reminder. I always figured it was like "Sit up straight" or "Eat more vegetables"—a sappy homily people sometimes need reinforced, despite its blatant obviousness.
No. I see now that it was flabbergasting existential judo—a Copernican flip of perspective. And it was received as a lofty principle which, like other forms of godliness, could only be aspired to, and never put into actual practice.
This explains why a sappy 1960s self-help book proposing a mild step further ("I'm OK – You're OK") was even more paradigm-flipping and gasp-inducing, and became a giant best-seller, though it struck me, even as a small child, as ludicrously banal.
No. That was the heavy advanced shit.
Here's a cheerful re-framing: One can normally walk down the street without being clubbed over the head and robbed or raped. Things are vastly better than in pre-civilization days, and we're incomparably more considerate and empathic than the animal kingdom we recently crawled out of. So just adjust your expectations and it will all be fine.
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Shrunken World Scenario
I was in the hospital for scary heart stuff. It would be easily fixed with a stent, and I'd be cleared for exertions galore, though I didn't know it at the time. But I was cheerful. I'm a wave-rider. Tell me my limits, and I'll contrive a way to solve problems—and have fun!—within those limits.
In that moment, my life revolved around my iPad, because it was literally all I had. Aside from one friendly nurse, there was little for me to curiously probe or engage with—certainly no eateries to explore—outside my bed, where I was firmly stuck. And in that twin-sized world were precisely two things:
So my universe was the iPad, and The God Damned Charging Cord would not reach the outlet. So I needed to periodically charge it while it was poised on a ledge, and this required leaning over hard with an IV drip pulling at my opposite arm as it delivered the nitroglycerin keeping me (not to be melodramatic) alive. Plus, I needed to acrobatically bend over and around, as an unfamiliar internal voice, with the hesitance of an entity unaccustomed to speaking up, cleared its throat and politely questioned my life choices:
Aside from that, I was ready for test results, and for a plastic squib to be pushed through my circulatory system to lodge open a critical artery. In fact, I was so amiably game that the head nurse (not the nice one) sent a social worker to attempt to ease the oblivious slob into accepting the gravity of his situation. If she had been aware of how The God Damned Charging Cord was oppressing me, she'd have had me sent straight to the psych ward.
A few days ago, I wrote about how I'm immensely adaptable about big things yet oddly petty about small things. Pondering this, I've decided it's about life scale. If your life is big—you're busy, or dreamy, or have lots of pots on the stove and irons in the fire—you live in a vastly different universe than if your life is more lifesized. A sufficiently small life can revolve entirely around The God Damned Charging Cord, however odd that might seem to a harried cardiac nurse, or to a reader unprepared by paragraphs of psychological self-explanation.
Since I don't occupy myself with what's not happening, or make myself miserable over contingencies, my life gets extremely small. Drama is for larger livers. Most of us swell with vexations, resentments, fears, and thirsts. These "big canvas" tools stretch life fabric to distant horizons, framing out expansive MacMansions of Hell, well-stocked with construction materials for more additions.
In the hospital, I stuck out among hordes of teary, petrified patients beset by emotional turbulence, but this represented the opposite of superiority. They were the ones with great big lives, undergoing monumental events, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra, while I was left in the dust, plotting my ratty little tactics re: The God Damned Charging Cord which—in the absence of heroic derring-do and epic tragedy—represented my entire pathetic little universe.
The Shrunken World Scenario also explains the elderly propensity for staring placidly into space. It's not always a matter of frailty or dementia. They've seen through fake drama, ceased obsessing over "what's missing," and begun wave-riding. Those internal processes reduce external engagement and shrink lives. We don't send a social worker when grandpa keeps his powder dry amid adversity, because it's normal behavior at that age. Yet despite the overarching equanimity, old people can be notoriously petty. I’ve explained why. Within small lives, a tablecloth stain or leaky faucet looms awfully large.
When I moved to Portugal, I discovered that the old friends I'd arranged to temporarily stay with were vicious late-stage alcoholics. I endured this (and other chaos) while living out of a small suitcase as my possessions slowly drifted toward me via the world's slowest container ship. For some mysterious reason, I'd brought along, as my sole discretionary object, my favorite baseball card of my favorite player (Tom Seaver, 1970), and as I spent countless hours sitting in my parked car seeking refuge from the madness, Seaver's confident countenance stared encouragingly from the dashboard. Within the minuscule universe of that car cabin, the petty token had real power.
From 1997 to 2005, I endured a very different sort of trouble. Big Life trouble, running an enormous web community without revenue or seed money or tech help or really anything aside from my wits and adrenal glands. Eventually, moderators volunteered, thank God, but by then I was working eight full-time jobs, unpaid, for the endeavor, with more pots on the stove and irons in the fire than any human being should endure.
In that predicament, no dumb charging cord could bother me, and no lousy baseball card could help.
There are always limits!Back in the hospital, I waited to learn which hand I'd been dealt. Chipper in the cardiac ward, there was only a single fly in my ointment: The God Damned Charging Cord.
I will never be a point guard for the NY Knicks. I could be compelled to frown about that suspended dream if I were to focus on it. And I could descend into bitter basketball drama if I held it close day after day while making toast and tying shoelaces. In fact, that's what most people do. They obsess over limitations, suspended dreams, and suboptimalities.
People live in a world of What Isn't, and I, too, indulged in that self-torture until one night I caught myself flipping between the wonderful time I was actually having and a contrived notion of what could have been happening and should have been happening. It stunned me to watch myself struggling to determine the appropriate framing. As if there were a real quandary.
After that revelation, I found it surprisingly easy to opt out of What Isn't. And when the only game in town is to play the cards you're dealt, life improves tremendously. But that's not what this posting is about.
In that moment, my life revolved around my iPad, because it was literally all I had. Aside from one friendly nurse, there was little for me to curiously probe or engage with—certainly no eateries to explore—outside my bed, where I was firmly stuck. And in that twin-sized world were precisely two things:
1. My iPad (for entertainment, information, communication, cardiac tutorials, and fun games).Re: #2, I wasn't about to meditate, or mess with my breathing, or anything like that, because I was essentially covered with police tape. This body of mine was not cleared for tampering.
2. A body with an alien monster grumbling in its chesty regions.
So my universe was the iPad, and The God Damned Charging Cord would not reach the outlet. So I needed to periodically charge it while it was poised on a ledge, and this required leaning over hard with an IV drip pulling at my opposite arm as it delivered the nitroglycerin keeping me (not to be melodramatic) alive. Plus, I needed to acrobatically bend over and around, as an unfamiliar internal voice, with the hesitance of an entity unaccustomed to speaking up, cleared its throat and politely questioned my life choices:
"Hey, uh, are you sure this is a good idea, bud?"It took a few paragraphs, but hopefully I've persuaded you that, deep in the cardiac ward, I was plagued by one single legit problem. It was a "mere" charging cord, but its significance, both for peril and for deliverance, was gigantic.
Aside from that, I was ready for test results, and for a plastic squib to be pushed through my circulatory system to lodge open a critical artery. In fact, I was so amiably game that the head nurse (not the nice one) sent a social worker to attempt to ease the oblivious slob into accepting the gravity of his situation. If she had been aware of how The God Damned Charging Cord was oppressing me, she'd have had me sent straight to the psych ward.
A few days ago, I wrote about how I'm immensely adaptable about big things yet oddly petty about small things. Pondering this, I've decided it's about life scale. If your life is big—you're busy, or dreamy, or have lots of pots on the stove and irons in the fire—you live in a vastly different universe than if your life is more lifesized. A sufficiently small life can revolve entirely around The God Damned Charging Cord, however odd that might seem to a harried cardiac nurse, or to a reader unprepared by paragraphs of psychological self-explanation.
Since I don't occupy myself with what's not happening, or make myself miserable over contingencies, my life gets extremely small. Drama is for larger livers. Most of us swell with vexations, resentments, fears, and thirsts. These "big canvas" tools stretch life fabric to distant horizons, framing out expansive MacMansions of Hell, well-stocked with construction materials for more additions.
In the hospital, I stuck out among hordes of teary, petrified patients beset by emotional turbulence, but this represented the opposite of superiority. They were the ones with great big lives, undergoing monumental events, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra, while I was left in the dust, plotting my ratty little tactics re: The God Damned Charging Cord which—in the absence of heroic derring-do and epic tragedy—represented my entire pathetic little universe.
Everlasting gratitude for my friend Dave who brought a longer cord on day two. After that, all was well. The stent's been fine, too. Heart stuff is not what you think it is.Let's call it the Shrunken World Scenario. For one thing, it explains why small children get hysterical over lost balloons. Kids have fabulous imaginations, but they don't use them to contrive grand grown-up predicaments. In their small worlds, a balloon looms large. So they are not wrong to mourn it.
The Shrunken World Scenario also explains the elderly propensity for staring placidly into space. It's not always a matter of frailty or dementia. They've seen through fake drama, ceased obsessing over "what's missing," and begun wave-riding. Those internal processes reduce external engagement and shrink lives. We don't send a social worker when grandpa keeps his powder dry amid adversity, because it's normal behavior at that age. Yet despite the overarching equanimity, old people can be notoriously petty. I’ve explained why. Within small lives, a tablecloth stain or leaky faucet looms awfully large.
When I moved to Portugal, I discovered that the old friends I'd arranged to temporarily stay with were vicious late-stage alcoholics. I endured this (and other chaos) while living out of a small suitcase as my possessions slowly drifted toward me via the world's slowest container ship. For some mysterious reason, I'd brought along, as my sole discretionary object, my favorite baseball card of my favorite player (Tom Seaver, 1970), and as I spent countless hours sitting in my parked car seeking refuge from the madness, Seaver's confident countenance stared encouragingly from the dashboard. Within the minuscule universe of that car cabin, the petty token had real power.
From 1997 to 2005, I endured a very different sort of trouble. Big Life trouble, running an enormous web community without revenue or seed money or tech help or really anything aside from my wits and adrenal glands. Eventually, moderators volunteered, thank God, but by then I was working eight full-time jobs, unpaid, for the endeavor, with more pots on the stove and irons in the fire than any human being should endure.
In that predicament, no dumb charging cord could bother me, and no lousy baseball card could help.
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Two Articles Way Too Essential to Recommend
Two pieces of writing I normally wouldn't recommend because they're so obvious:
Gay Talese's Esquire profile "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (with a memorable guest appearance by sci-fi author Harlan Ellison) is widely considered, especially among writers, to be the greatest magazine article ever.
Neil Stephenson's Mother Earth Board, explaining the history and technology of underseas cables, is - all 130 pages of it - widely considered a masterpiece of long-form magazine writing.
Some follow-ups to that Stephenson piece: this week, Meta announced "Project Waterworth", a global subsea cable project spanning 50,000 kilometers). And here's a fancy NY Times thingee about How the Internet Travels Across Oceans.
Finally, here's Kevin Kelly's 2010 list of The Best Magazine Articles Ever . I stumbled upon it while editing this posting, and found that it links to the Talese and Stephenson articles, because both are, again, too obvious to recommend.
Gay Talese's Esquire profile "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (with a memorable guest appearance by sci-fi author Harlan Ellison) is widely considered, especially among writers, to be the greatest magazine article ever.
Neil Stephenson's Mother Earth Board, explaining the history and technology of underseas cables, is - all 130 pages of it - widely considered a masterpiece of long-form magazine writing.
Some follow-ups to that Stephenson piece: this week, Meta announced "Project Waterworth", a global subsea cable project spanning 50,000 kilometers). And here's a fancy NY Times thingee about How the Internet Travels Across Oceans.
Finally, here's Kevin Kelly's 2010 list of The Best Magazine Articles Ever . I stumbled upon it while editing this posting, and found that it links to the Talese and Stephenson articles, because both are, again, too obvious to recommend.
Monday, February 17, 2025
I'd Be Happy to Answer Any Questions
I know I've said this before, but if you actually watch for it, you'll be astounded at how true this is...
So people who flamboyantly invite questions will tolerate one, possibly two, easy questions. The sort of questions that are already in the FAQ. If you ask hard questions, or more than a couple, or if you follow up, you'll summon the beast (most often in the form of glaring silence). Watch for it!
Obviously, I don't mean someone giving a public talk or hosting a radio call-in show who invites audience members to the microphone. In those scenarios, they're stuck. They must answer questions. It's a particularly obscure reason for people's fear of public speaking!
Wait one second. Before proceeding, here's the all-time best example of something seldom-noticed which proves staggeringly true if you watch for it: the more egregiously another car cuts you off, the sooner it will brake to make another turn.There are two sorts of people: people who are happy to answer questions, and people who are not happy to answer questions. People who are happy to answer questions never invite questions. It wouldn't occur to them. They just happily answer, ad infinitum. Of course you can ask questions! As opposed to what, "don't you dare ask me a question"??
So people who flamboyantly invite questions will tolerate one, possibly two, easy questions. The sort of questions that are already in the FAQ. If you ask hard questions, or more than a couple, or if you follow up, you'll summon the beast (most often in the form of glaring silence). Watch for it!
Obviously, I don't mean someone giving a public talk or hosting a radio call-in show who invites audience members to the microphone. In those scenarios, they're stuck. They must answer questions. It's a particularly obscure reason for people's fear of public speaking!
A gum dentist ("gummodentologist" is, I believe, the proper term) performed a gum graft and gave me his cell number in case of problems. He'd never mentioned how damned much it would hurt, due to 1. marketing considerations (i.e. he really wanted me to actually show up and pay), and 2. the fact that he'd performed these procedures for decades, so only a damned idiot wouldn't know this fact which is so obvious to him.
So I called his cell on a Saturday to tell him it hurt. He feigned concern, asking if any teeth had fallen out, or if blood was gushing, or if I was unable to remember my name. Any limbs fallen off? Gerbil flocks? No? Well, then fine, he'll get back to his picnic now with his family. The next day it hurt way more. Not just soreness; more like an army of demons stabbing me in the mouth. I called again, and he hustled me off the phone with minimal courtesy, and when I showed up for my follow-up the office fell silent. Here's that fricking guy who called Dr. Hsznftzmm's cell on a weekend...twice.
Note that this story contained an example of Expert/Layman Triage Fallacy
Sunday, February 16, 2025
The Fish
The fish arrives at your table. It's beautifully, perfectly broiled. You beam brightly and tell the chef (who's missing a couple of teeth and whose eyes don't focus real good) that he's a genius. And because his customers view perfect fish as their entitlement, he's never been complimented in his life, so the acknowledgement means something.
But you take a bite, and it's a tiny bit dry. Just the tiniest bit, but it can't be denied: he over-did it. Slightly. Still delicious! Still within parameters! But he's no...no...
Your thought stream stalls. The sentence won't complete.
Are you averse to admitting your error? Would it scrape your ego to retract the mental assessment?
Or are you loathe to puncture your glowy sensation of virtue? Too self-satisfied from the dramatic vignette?
None of those things. The fish is dry, and he is a genius, and he'll nail it next time.
You go back another day, and he nails it.
Was I right the first time? Or did I make it happen with my beaming encouragement? Or did the flow work itself out while I simply waited? Or did I frame truth by my choice of start and end points?
Saturday, February 15, 2025
The Moment Before
Now—the present moment—is terra incognita.
There’s nothing so "out there" about this observation. It’s scarcely some hippy proposition. We live in a world striving to be mindful; to be here now, even though that’s where we inexorably are the whole time. People with a keen sense of presence—on their toes and responsively ready to go—seem to possess a super-power, and also a dysfunction (Why so jumpy? Why so intense?).
As someone with that power/dysfunction, my fascination has shifted to the previous moment. We all time travel incessantly, but hardly anyone considers the previous moment, though its clearly visible receding face—the splash point of the Present’s ripples—should give it special status in our regard.
I'll bring this down to Earth with a solidly relatable example. Every time we're sick, there’s a moment where we announce it to ourselves. Were we perfectly fine a millisecond prior? Of course not. We were sick without consciously saying so. We knew, but without statement. And that’s interesting! Not for some exploration of (cue spooky music) THE UNCONSCIOUS, but for pragmatically understanding what this all is and how it all works.
Every conclusion, realization, thought, or action is the product of a Previous Moment. In the case of sudden lightning bolts—of Epiphanies, Eurekas, or Inspirations—the previous moment was occupied by a shift of perspective, fostering the bolt. If we were, in that moment, blandly unknowing, then what prompted the shift? We knew! We shifted because it tugged us because we knew, in a deeper, more visceral way of knowing. A moment full of juicy goodness.
But hold on. What about the moment before that Previous Moment? In that Penultimate Moment, before the shift preceding the bolt producing the epiphany, there was the making of the decision to shift. Even more profound! This Penultimate Moment might be the juiciest of all!
And if so, are we not compelled to consider the magical moment preceding that Penultimate Moment? The one where we chose to decide to shift?
Etc.
There’s nothing so "out there" about this observation. It’s scarcely some hippy proposition. We live in a world striving to be mindful; to be here now, even though that’s where we inexorably are the whole time. People with a keen sense of presence—on their toes and responsively ready to go—seem to possess a super-power, and also a dysfunction (Why so jumpy? Why so intense?).
As someone with that power/dysfunction, my fascination has shifted to the previous moment. We all time travel incessantly, but hardly anyone considers the previous moment, though its clearly visible receding face—the splash point of the Present’s ripples—should give it special status in our regard.
I'll bring this down to Earth with a solidly relatable example. Every time we're sick, there’s a moment where we announce it to ourselves. Were we perfectly fine a millisecond prior? Of course not. We were sick without consciously saying so. We knew, but without statement. And that’s interesting! Not for some exploration of (cue spooky music) THE UNCONSCIOUS, but for pragmatically understanding what this all is and how it all works.
Every conclusion, realization, thought, or action is the product of a Previous Moment. In the case of sudden lightning bolts—of Epiphanies, Eurekas, or Inspirations—the previous moment was occupied by a shift of perspective, fostering the bolt. If we were, in that moment, blandly unknowing, then what prompted the shift? We knew! We shifted because it tugged us because we knew, in a deeper, more visceral way of knowing. A moment full of juicy goodness.
But hold on. What about the moment before that Previous Moment? In that Penultimate Moment, before the shift preceding the bolt producing the epiphany, there was the making of the decision to shift. Even more profound! This Penultimate Moment might be the juiciest of all!
And if so, are we not compelled to consider the magical moment preceding that Penultimate Moment? The one where we chose to decide to shift?
Etc.
Friday, February 14, 2025
Europe, Step Up!
Europe, step up!
The era of smug complacency under Uncle Sam’s beneficence - of channeling governmental energies into nannyism and stale pettiness - is over and you must repel a third falling shadow.
This one’s weak and exhausted. Putin’s Russia enjoys no frenzied dark Utopianism; no inexorable thrust of momentum. On its last leg, it would steal a cheap Hail Mary delivered, inevitably, by its orange stooge.
The ball is teed up, the meat well-tenderized, the tyrants elderly and deluded. World War III will be a slam dunk, a brief ugly anachronism, if you can summon the will.
Europe, step up!
The era of smug complacency under Uncle Sam’s beneficence - of channeling governmental energies into nannyism and stale pettiness - is over and you must repel a third falling shadow.
This one’s weak and exhausted. Putin’s Russia enjoys no frenzied dark Utopianism; no inexorable thrust of momentum. On its last leg, it would steal a cheap Hail Mary delivered, inevitably, by its orange stooge.
The ball is teed up, the meat well-tenderized, the tyrants elderly and deluded. World War III will be a slam dunk, a brief ugly anachronism, if you can summon the will.
Europe, step up!
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Crazy Adaptable and Crazy Petty
I'm the most adaptable guy in the world. Several of my best friends voted Trump, and I feel perfectly at home in Ecuadorian or Cambodian restaurants, and I've palled around with addicts and murderers. I used to play blues in a white tuxedo in a ghetto crackhouse (there was gunfire twice), and after-hours Dominican meringue gigs at 3am in the South Bronx (back when the South Bronx was the South Bronx). In tenth grade I took the train into Manhattan for my weekly trombone lesson in 1977-era muggalicious Times Square. And I swaggeringly add stuff like watercress and farofa to my pasta without so much as blinking.
So how am I also the pettiest guy in the world? Just one example:
Here, Kleenex tissues are half the weight, which feels like torture to my expectations every damned time. And they come in flimsy cardboard boxes which hold like 40 tissues, total. When I pull one out of its box to gratify my runny schnoz, the box hoists along with it before reluctantly falling back to its surface with a dissatisfying "FUUUULFF". It drives me absolutely crazy. I haven't yet paid to ship kleenex boxes from America, but I'm more than halfway through the DOBEE dish cleaning pads, the Ivory Liquid detergent, the Theratears lubricating eyedrops, and the SimpleHuman quality trash bags I shipped over with my furniture to preserve my sanity.
And when I finally run out of Bandaids, and must use the hellishly expensive, 1965-ish ones sold in Europe which stick only to the wound and not at all to the skin around it, and are neither waterproof nor flexible, I will face a grave existential crisis.
So how am I also the pettiest guy in the world? Just one example:
Here, Kleenex tissues are half the weight, which feels like torture to my expectations every damned time. And they come in flimsy cardboard boxes which hold like 40 tissues, total. When I pull one out of its box to gratify my runny schnoz, the box hoists along with it before reluctantly falling back to its surface with a dissatisfying "FUUUULFF". It drives me absolutely crazy. I haven't yet paid to ship kleenex boxes from America, but I'm more than halfway through the DOBEE dish cleaning pads, the Ivory Liquid detergent, the Theratears lubricating eyedrops, and the SimpleHuman quality trash bags I shipped over with my furniture to preserve my sanity.
And when I finally run out of Bandaids, and must use the hellishly expensive, 1965-ish ones sold in Europe which stick only to the wound and not at all to the skin around it, and are neither waterproof nor flexible, I will face a grave existential crisis.
Monday, February 10, 2025
Hubris
1000 years from now, teachers explaining the concept of hubris will no longer use Icarus as their example. Instead, they will recount the parable of Elon Musk.
Saturday, February 8, 2025
The Soul of Pasta
Gringos - including food expert gringos - don't "get" tacos. Tacos aren't a dish. They're a format. Only Mexicans understand this.
Everything is eaten with tortillas. Because, of course it is! Tortillas are the staple. What rice is in (southern) China, tortillas are in Mexico. Eating food consists of tearing off bits of tortilla and wrapping food in it. If you're in a hurry to pack food to go or want "finger food" for a party, you might pre-wrap. That's what tacos are. It's the entire world of food (which of course is eaten with tortillas), but pre-wrapped. Sandwiches are an exact equivalent. We eat bread with meals, but for reasons of convenience, portability, modernity, and/or change of pace, we might "do it as a" sandwich. "Sandwiches" isn't a dish, it's a format. Most anything can sandwich.
Once you understand what tacos are, you understand that anything's potentially a taco. Not in the fusion sense, or some chic experimental sense. Any Mexican grandma would recognize and approve of my seemingly radical tacos. Because whatever she eats might be pre-wrapped, because why not? If you grok this, you're spiritually Mexican. And being spiritually Mexican, everything you make will taste Mexican, further anointing your tacos. You can't go wrong!
Same for pasta. Pasta is not a set of recipes or ingredients. It's not a special corner of cuisine; it is, like tacos, a wide-open means of interfacing carbs and protein. If you grok this, you're Italian, and if you're Italian, your pasta will taste Italian regardless of what's in it.
I'm Italian enough to combine (per photo below) watercress, garlic, avocado, farofa (Brazilian toasted manioc flour), and red pepper flakes with ghastly supermarket cheese ravioli, and have it taste 1. good and 2. Italian. And you could, too. You just need to reframe!
Everything is eaten with tortillas. Because, of course it is! Tortillas are the staple. What rice is in (southern) China, tortillas are in Mexico. Eating food consists of tearing off bits of tortilla and wrapping food in it. If you're in a hurry to pack food to go or want "finger food" for a party, you might pre-wrap. That's what tacos are. It's the entire world of food (which of course is eaten with tortillas), but pre-wrapped. Sandwiches are an exact equivalent. We eat bread with meals, but for reasons of convenience, portability, modernity, and/or change of pace, we might "do it as a" sandwich. "Sandwiches" isn't a dish, it's a format. Most anything can sandwich.
Once you understand what tacos are, you understand that anything's potentially a taco. Not in the fusion sense, or some chic experimental sense. Any Mexican grandma would recognize and approve of my seemingly radical tacos. Because whatever she eats might be pre-wrapped, because why not? If you grok this, you're spiritually Mexican. And being spiritually Mexican, everything you make will taste Mexican, further anointing your tacos. You can't go wrong!
Same for pasta. Pasta is not a set of recipes or ingredients. It's not a special corner of cuisine; it is, like tacos, a wide-open means of interfacing carbs and protein. If you grok this, you're Italian, and if you're Italian, your pasta will taste Italian regardless of what's in it.
I'm Italian enough to combine (per photo below) watercress, garlic, avocado, farofa (Brazilian toasted manioc flour), and red pepper flakes with ghastly supermarket cheese ravioli, and have it taste 1. good and 2. Italian. And you could, too. You just need to reframe!
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
Still Expecting Damaged People to Self-Repair to Accommodate Me
I was friends with two married couples back in the day. Two of them, some years back, chose to break up with their respective partners so they could be with each other. This was intensely painful for the rejected spouses, of course.
It happens. It's not nice, but it happens. Commitment to relationships is a thing, but so is love. It's a tricky wicket. I have no pat answers.
However, the happy couple, both of whom are celebrities here, had the chutzpah to produce a TV special detailing the storybook nature of their beautiful love story, retracing their circuitous paths to a middle-aged discovery of a level of towering, billowing love neither previously imagined possible. This shlock played on television in front of their exes, who'd done nothing but love them sincerely (one of them had moved across the world and put aside career ambitions for the relationship).
Holy Jesus on a shingle.
Obviously, I took the side of the jilted, and aimed to steer clear of the storybook lovers. But circumstance landed me in their midst, and, having no personal beef with either, I was cordial, and we kept up some contact for a while. But at some point they were shamelessly and callously inconsiderate of my feelings. And this actually shocked and perturbed me.
Proving, yet again, that the human psyche can't process the fact that damaged people cannot be expected to self-repair to accommodate you.
Consider the narcissistic absurdity of my thought process: These are people who not only cheated on their partners, and devastated innocent lives, but then went so far as to gloat about it on national TV. And when they were less than agreeable with me, well, I took UMBRAGE! How dare they! And it took me months - months! - to frame it correctly.
So that time I met Don Rickles, he was so - what's the word? - insulting!
It happens. It's not nice, but it happens. Commitment to relationships is a thing, but so is love. It's a tricky wicket. I have no pat answers.
However, the happy couple, both of whom are celebrities here, had the chutzpah to produce a TV special detailing the storybook nature of their beautiful love story, retracing their circuitous paths to a middle-aged discovery of a level of towering, billowing love neither previously imagined possible. This shlock played on television in front of their exes, who'd done nothing but love them sincerely (one of them had moved across the world and put aside career ambitions for the relationship).
Holy Jesus on a shingle.
Obviously, I took the side of the jilted, and aimed to steer clear of the storybook lovers. But circumstance landed me in their midst, and, having no personal beef with either, I was cordial, and we kept up some contact for a while. But at some point they were shamelessly and callously inconsiderate of my feelings. And this actually shocked and perturbed me.
Proving, yet again, that the human psyche can't process the fact that damaged people cannot be expected to self-repair to accommodate you.
Consider the narcissistic absurdity of my thought process: These are people who not only cheated on their partners, and devastated innocent lives, but then went so far as to gloat about it on national TV. And when they were less than agreeable with me, well, I took UMBRAGE! How dare they! And it took me months - months! - to frame it correctly.
So that time I met Don Rickles, he was so - what's the word? - insulting!
Monday, February 3, 2025
Stating the Obvious
I try not to state the obvious, or things lots of other people are saying. You have countless places to go for confirmation bias; I work the the other side of the fence.
But just as a sanity check: yes, this is pretty bad, particularly co-president Elon Musk's ketamine-fueled raid through the inner sanctum of American's private data and his move-fast-and-break-things purges of what he deems overly liberal agencies like USAID without a shred of legal basis or standing.
My mind is also boggled by the prospect of RFK, Tulsi, Hegseth and Patel let loose on gigantic institutions for which their lack of qualification is the good news. The alcoholism, Putin affiliation, and extreme views are much more insidious. Organizations can run competently under idiots, but not under vindictive crazies.
It's odd, though, that so many knowledgeable people are failing to recognize how old-school a lot of this is. So old-school that it's not the least bit MAGA. I asked Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson:
He agreed, noting that the difference this time is the desire for regulatory capture by Elon and the tech bros. I wrote back that it was no more "idealistic" in the 90s, when the purpose was regulatory capture for the Koches. As a true believer back at that time, he may not have appreciated the cold water splash. No reply as yet.
But that's old litigation. The point to remember is that this stuff isn't Trumpian twitchy impulse writ large, like his first term. This is Trump-as-puppet. Project 2025, it seems, is happening, and not as a tangy ribbon, but as a wholesale revolution based on ideas that 80s and 90s movement conservatives barely dared to toy around with.
But just as a sanity check: yes, this is pretty bad, particularly co-president Elon Musk's ketamine-fueled raid through the inner sanctum of American's private data and his move-fast-and-break-things purges of what he deems overly liberal agencies like USAID without a shred of legal basis or standing.
My mind is also boggled by the prospect of RFK, Tulsi, Hegseth and Patel let loose on gigantic institutions for which their lack of qualification is the good news. The alcoholism, Putin affiliation, and extreme views are much more insidious. Organizations can run competently under idiots, but not under vindictive crazies.
It's odd, though, that so many knowledgeable people are failing to recognize how old-school a lot of this is. So old-school that it's not the least bit MAGA. I asked Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson:
“Obliterate the federal bureaucracy and privatize everything” is 90s conservatism. Reaganesque, even. When the hell did that re-arise? And why so sneakily? Can you trace it? Or are you as blindsided and confused as I am? There’s nothing harder than to parse tectonic shifts 'in situ'!The trick to being friends with super busy and/or famous people is terseness.
He agreed, noting that the difference this time is the desire for regulatory capture by Elon and the tech bros. I wrote back that it was no more "idealistic" in the 90s, when the purpose was regulatory capture for the Koches. As a true believer back at that time, he may not have appreciated the cold water splash. No reply as yet.
But that's old litigation. The point to remember is that this stuff isn't Trumpian twitchy impulse writ large, like his first term. This is Trump-as-puppet. Project 2025, it seems, is happening, and not as a tangy ribbon, but as a wholesale revolution based on ideas that 80s and 90s movement conservatives barely dared to toy around with.
Sunday, February 2, 2025
Solidarity Masks
A literary event last week at Boston's First Parish Church:
Don’t forget your solidarity mask!
During COVID, when rage-spittled conservatives refused to wear masks because they decided it was nothing but liberal gesturing and sanctimony, I considered them dangerous lunatics. Now with the epidemiological part removed, the gestural trope remains, and one might conclude that conservatives were right all along.
They certainly were not. But this line of thought illustrates how gestural madness and extremism propel people into the opposite camp. Both sides are fueled by a noxious combination of 1. tribalism and 2. recoil from Those Horrible Assholes. We are no longer approaching an Israeli/Palestinian-type situation. We're there.
I look Right and I see gestural stupidity and extremism. I look Left and I see gestural stupidity and extremism. So I choose the rational center. In Portugal.
"BUT JIM, AN INVITATION TO OPTIONALLY WEAR MASKS HARDLY TICKS THE METER IN A WEEK WHERE MAGA IS DEVOURING THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT!"
Correct! But many in the crowds cheering on these extreme actions from the Right were driven to MAGA by disdain for extremism on the Left (few Americans have the self-restraint to gravitate moderately to center; their disgust impels more hyperbolic recoil).
And I invite you to go back and listen to Bernie Saunders speeches circa 2015, where he promised - with populist fire - sweeping, tectonic changes to institutions, while crowds roared appreciatively. Extremists only pretend to hate tyranny. What they really hate is the other side's tyrant.
During COVID, when rage-spittled conservatives refused to wear masks because they decided it was nothing but liberal gesturing and sanctimony, I considered them dangerous lunatics. Now with the epidemiological part removed, the gestural trope remains, and one might conclude that conservatives were right all along.
They certainly were not. But this line of thought illustrates how gestural madness and extremism propel people into the opposite camp. Both sides are fueled by a noxious combination of 1. tribalism and 2. recoil from Those Horrible Assholes. We are no longer approaching an Israeli/Palestinian-type situation. We're there.
I look Right and I see gestural stupidity and extremism. I look Left and I see gestural stupidity and extremism. So I choose the rational center. In Portugal.
"BUT JIM, AN INVITATION TO OPTIONALLY WEAR MASKS HARDLY TICKS THE METER IN A WEEK WHERE MAGA IS DEVOURING THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT!"
Correct! But many in the crowds cheering on these extreme actions from the Right were driven to MAGA by disdain for extremism on the Left (few Americans have the self-restraint to gravitate moderately to center; their disgust impels more hyperbolic recoil).
And I invite you to go back and listen to Bernie Saunders speeches circa 2015, where he promised - with populist fire - sweeping, tectonic changes to institutions, while crowds roared appreciatively. Extremists only pretend to hate tyranny. What they really hate is the other side's tyrant.
Saturday, February 1, 2025
The Kids Are All Right
I aim to be helpful. It hasn't gone well.
The punishment of good deeds can play out as a mild Reader Digest quip or a harrowing Twilight Zone episode. At worst, it can be quite a lot.
I frequently recall a rare instance of utter ease and perfection. My 80 year old childhood trombone teacher called to say:
My friend Lou held a reading of the book he'd just published post-mortem, written by his miserable dead wife. She'd experienced horrors in childhood and never recovered. Her book recounted the horrors from which she'd never recovered.
She was born and raised in a big wonderful mansion in Austria with loving parents and siblings, boisterous dogs, and crackling fireplaces. As the eldest daughter, she'd inherit the house and raise a family of her own there one day. But her father died and they lost the house and moved into an apartment. The end.
In the living room of Lou's house (much nicer than anywhere I'd lived, and where his miserable dead wife had spent decades), several attendees wept openly, while the rest dabbed their eyes with tissues. So, so sad.
Me, I was incredulous. Really? That's it? She went from a house to an apartment (and then to Lou's pretty damned nice split-level colonial), and this compelled her to make herself — and everyone around her — thoroughly miserable forever and ever? I know people who don't even have apartments, and none of them paint grand tragedies.
The difference, I mused, was the difference. A small apartment — like where I lived — was a come-down from a mansion. Ok, sure. But when she'd hooked up with Lou, her mood might have elevated as she made up some lost ground! But no, her suffering was a one-way ratchet. And this made no sense.
So I diagramed her trajectory, stripping away particulars to consider the broad contour:
If I contrast my trombone teacher's problem with Lou's miserable dead wife's problem, the difference is clear: The former was a problem. The latter was not a problem.
In fact, stripped of particulars, scarcely any problems are problems. Most often, they boil down to "I thought 'A' would happen, but 'B' happened." And that's not a problem — unless you're immensely privileged and extraordinarily confused.
This explains why my problem-solving impulse creates problems for me. If you try to solve a problem that's not a problem for someone who imagines they have a problem, you will mostly just get entangled in their fervid problem creation. For my elderly trombone teacher that one time, I provided a solution. For nearly everyone else, I'm grist for their mill.
Really, Sir Lancelot, the kids are all right.
The punishment of good deeds can play out as a mild Reader Digest quip or a harrowing Twilight Zone episode. At worst, it can be quite a lot.
I frequently recall a rare instance of utter ease and perfection. My 80 year old childhood trombone teacher called to say:
"Pipes burst. Carpenter needs $2000. I don't have it. If you loan me, I'll pay back out of social security every month."I burned 5 calories writing and mailing a check, and my bank statement reported monthly deposits until I was repaid. It was so luxuriously easy. A tangible fix to a dire circumstance at no real cost to anyone. The episode had glided on greasy smooth tracks, as close to "nothing" as any something can feel. And I often make this my basis of comparison. Especially regarding that weird night at Lou's house.
My friend Lou held a reading of the book he'd just published post-mortem, written by his miserable dead wife. She'd experienced horrors in childhood and never recovered. Her book recounted the horrors from which she'd never recovered.
She was born and raised in a big wonderful mansion in Austria with loving parents and siblings, boisterous dogs, and crackling fireplaces. As the eldest daughter, she'd inherit the house and raise a family of her own there one day. But her father died and they lost the house and moved into an apartment. The end.
In the living room of Lou's house (much nicer than anywhere I'd lived, and where his miserable dead wife had spent decades), several attendees wept openly, while the rest dabbed their eyes with tissues. So, so sad.
Me, I was incredulous. Really? That's it? She went from a house to an apartment (and then to Lou's pretty damned nice split-level colonial), and this compelled her to make herself — and everyone around her — thoroughly miserable forever and ever? I know people who don't even have apartments, and none of them paint grand tragedies.
The difference, I mused, was the difference. A small apartment — like where I lived — was a come-down from a mansion. Ok, sure. But when she'd hooked up with Lou, her mood might have elevated as she made up some lost ground! But no, her suffering was a one-way ratchet. And this made no sense.
So I diagramed her trajectory, stripping away particulars to consider the broad contour:
"I thought 'A' would happen, but 'B' happened."Not being wealthy, this was unfamiliar algebra. I never had reason to assume that my expectations would be met. I figured I'd continue bobbing and floating amid the waves of an indifferent ocean for my duration. And the notion of haughty entitlement to expected results struck me as, well, hilarious. I tried not to guffaw as Lou read the very sad manuscript, his cheeks streaming with tears.
If I contrast my trombone teacher's problem with Lou's miserable dead wife's problem, the difference is clear: The former was a problem. The latter was not a problem.
In fact, stripped of particulars, scarcely any problems are problems. Most often, they boil down to "I thought 'A' would happen, but 'B' happened." And that's not a problem — unless you're immensely privileged and extraordinarily confused.
This explains why my problem-solving impulse creates problems for me. If you try to solve a problem that's not a problem for someone who imagines they have a problem, you will mostly just get entangled in their fervid problem creation. For my elderly trombone teacher that one time, I provided a solution. For nearly everyone else, I'm grist for their mill.
Really, Sir Lancelot, the kids are all right.
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