White House Chain Reaction in Progress

On Tuesday, I dismayed about the Democrats overplaying their hand and falling into a trap. Just 48 hours later, this has become a much bigger, deeper story. Showing cognizance of guilt, Trump had buried the Ukrainian call transcript in a facility normally reserved for matters of highest state security. And there appear to be a slew of transcripts so interred...and a scad of WH staffers know about it.

To my eye, disgusting as this is, it's still not much more damning than behavior in the Mueller Report which did nothing to turn moderate Republican voters (whose support for the administration, however ambivalent, is what's kept Republican politicians obeisant to Dear Leader).

But the current chain-reacting mushroom cloud of news is something new; unprecedented in the short annals of the Orange Throne. It just might trigger a critical turn where the perennial trickle of White House leaks turns into a panicky gusher. As the wry Quinn Cummings just put it on Twitter,

Professional Rodents Look For Easiest Path To Disembark From Terminally-Listing Waterborne Conveyance https://t.co/rcEECkMjUm

— Quinn Cummings (@quinncy) September 26, 2019

If so, perhaps McConnell miscalculated (there's a phrase one doesn't often see) in rushing the transcript and whistleblower report to public view to coax Democrats into his trap. If the White House staff finally gushes, moderate Republican voters may finally turn around (nothing could shake fervid MAGAs), and there's a remote possibility of conviction in the Senate.

For now, that's merely an unlikelihood (WH staff rebellion) which might trigger an unlikelihood (moderate Republican detachment) which might trigger an enormous unlikelihood (two-thirds majority of the Republican-led Senate votes to convict). But by tonight, at this rate, who knows?

Blue Crow Media

I've been a fan of London's Blue Crow Media for a long time, since I discovered their "Craft Beer New York" smart phone app. It's hard to offer subjective guidance in an app or guidebook - you need to convey an authentically personal-but-knowledgeable voice while being manageably succinct - and their work impressed me.

For those unaware, I recently created my own subjective guidance app, "Eat Everywhere", which coaches you through the ordering/eating experience for every nationality.

Blue Crow subsequently moved out of apps and into maps, and their work remains just as smart and tasteful. The maps feel like your birthday; crisp, luxe paper; deep, interesting colors; and admirably thoughtful design with great attention to detail. If you appreciate the meticulousness of a Steve Jobs or Stanley Kubrick, but reject the up-market fetishist pretension plied by too many of their disciples, this stuff is for you. No single item costs over £20, and most are £8 or £9.

Topics are largely design or architectural; pure geek bait like Art Deco maps for London or New York (they need to add Miami!), Brutalist maps of Boston and London, Concrete maps of Los Angeles, Montreal, New York, Tokyo, Toronto, and Melbourne. And lots more. Not many companies (especially UK-based!) would have the cheek to create a "Modernist Detroit Map", and the adeptness to really pull it off.

This isn't stuff I know a lot about, and one can’t look to these maps as primers. They're all-business, plunging right in without much background info. Yet one needn't be a stern Estonian draftsman with expensive wire-rimmed frames to catch the bug. I’m pretty ignorant of both Modernism and Belgrade, yet I hanker for the Modernist Belgrade map, and would use it to make a beeline for the city (once I spot a crazy-low fare).

Blue Crow's most recent offering is a New York Subway Architecture & Design Map. On one side of the thick, starchy cream/grey paper there's a stylized subway map, resembling the familiar one but a bit less data-dense and much more beautiful. As with much of Blue Crow's work, conventional detail is traded off for something less tangible - flair and framing. The important elements remain; knowing what to leave out is an art. On the flip side lies the good stuff: a dense grid of brief descriptions of four dozen station design fixtures and touches that I, as a lifelong New Yorker, barely knew existed. I was only dimly aware that the Atlantic Avenue/Barclays Center station features a Dutch gable, terracotta, Roman brick, limestone and granite ("Artist George Trakas and architects di Domenico + Partners added a stylized nautical gantry below the interior skylight"). Read in book form, this might seem dry. But packed into the back of a cool map, you want to jump into the subway and tour one's own hometown with fresh eyes.

Traveling away from home, it's helpful to have an orienting framework to start from. I'm not a fan of dashing from tourist mecca to tourist mecca, and soaking vibe from a random park bench only goes so far. These maps provide a basis for taking in a grand new city, and, really, one's basis can just as well be anything, so I treat these as geographic granfalloons. Taking in a city requires a map. And these are maps I love and trust, even if there's nary a taco recommendation.

I also own the 2020 Brutalist calendar, which itself is a brutalist artifact: squat, grey, and authoritative; as implacable as if it were built out of exposed concrete block. I'll actually put this one on a wall (previously I've only gone to that length for yucks, with industrial laundry calendars, horrid Chinese takeout calendars, etc).

As with their Craft Beer app, I find myself carried along by the evident enthusiasm and thoughtfulness. It's a magic trick, and I live for magic tricks. Order a couple of pieces and you'll see what I mean...and might even find yourself enticed into design/architecture nerdom.

Being UK-based, shipping charges can add up. Join their mailing list and you can order scads of maps whenever they offer a "free shipping everywhere" sale. Perhaps one day they'll grow to the point where they add a satellite warehouse in Omaha, and/or I can impulse-buy from Amazon.

While my interests and curiosities run broad, I'm only moderately a map guy and not at all an architecture/design person. So this is sort of like a cat endorsing a waterpark. But I find that my keenest appreciation springs when infectiousness kindles my preferences rather than vice-versa. I'm especially fond of beloved examples from realms which ordinarily leave me cold. Blue Crow Media's stuff brings that infectiousness.

The "R" Word

I like the word "retarded". This, of course, is a problem. I don't use it often, but there are situations where I feel called to invoke the voice of a jaded teen circa 1973, and nothing else gets the job done quite as well.

I know I'm not supposed to. There's a societal consensus on this, and, of course, writers and artists must always heed consensus preferences. That's our role: keep our heads down, tow the line, and stay within the bounds of politesse. Don't be bad. That's how artists roll. I get that.

But I'm not clear on the reasoning. I suppose the word is offensive to genuinely retarded people, but that usage doesn't even exist - the afflicted having been renamed - so I'm at a loss as to whom it offends, exactly. Perhaps simply non-smart people? We don't want to stigmatize low intelligence. But then why can I still say "stupid", or "moron", or "dope", or "lunatic"? Why can I freely shower my writing with "shmuck", "putz", "idiot", and "imbecile"?

I'd imagine the answer would be "Well, you shouldn't! These are highly negative, insulting and hurtful words, so they all should be avoided!"

Again, it's not that I'm not eager to diligently update my adherence to trendy social norms of expression. I just want to sensitively parse the ever-shrinking boundaries. So I have two questions:

1. Why is intelligence special? Shouldn't we proscribe "ugly", "clumsy", "untalented", "smelly", "limp-dicked", "flat-chested", and the many other terms stigmatizing deficiency and otherness?

2. Where do we draw the line? Frankly, "retarded" doesn't strike me as all that extreme ("moron" and "dope" contain far more venom). It's mostly just snide. So shall we expunge all snide speech, for example the description of a singer as "horrendously out-of-tune"? That's undeniably hurtful, no? Should she be "otherwise-tuned"?

Explaining Today's Political Mysteries

I've watched news hosts all day expressing puzzlement over why Mitch McConnell (along with 100% of Senate Republicans) is supporting release of the whistleblower complaint...and (as if they're unrelated!) the administration allowing the testimony plus promising to release the Ukraine call transcript. MSNBC's Chris Hayes "wonders whether there's some strategy at play I can't see" (he makes $6M/year, by the way).

The normally thoughtful and earnest Adam Schiff claimed they're frightened by the "big club" of impeachment. Schiff's either lying or he's dumb as a rock. I'm honestly not sure which.

Here's how this will go down. It's exactly the trap Pelosi struggled to avoid:

• The whistleblower will testify and it will be horrific.
• The Ukraine call transcript will be released and it will be horrific.
• The House will impeach.
• The Senate will acquit.
• The way will be cleared for 2020 with Dems having shot their wad and collapsed into an impotent heap.
• Incensed Republican voters (including suburbanites who don't love Trump, wear MAGA hats, or dream of torturing brown children) will FLOCK to the polls in 2020, energized by what seems to be an attempt to procedurally overturn their 2016 electoral will.
• Democrats, demoralized, splintered, and still repelling moderates by raving about late term abortions, gun seizures, slavery reparations, and trillions in new spending, lose the election.

Trump and McConnell want to complete this cycle ASAP, giving themselves a nice clean environment for the election. Facilitate the impeachment, recognizing that many/most Dem voters are unaware that an impeached president faces NO CONSEQUENCES, so, without Senate conviction post-impeachment, Trump's sole punishment would be shame....to which he's psychologically immune. Some Dems do understand the process, yet still demand impeachment because emotions.

So it will happen, it will fail, and he will win. Enjoy.

Grief Survival Kit

I'm replaying this popular posting from December 2017 because I've added new writing, indented, towards the end.


This works for all forms of grieving - not just for departed loved ones. Feel free to pass it on to someone in need, or bookmark for a future moment. See also the Depression Resuscitation Kit.


To be clear, it's ok to feel sad. Grieving is natural. I'm not suggesting that we should be cold, emotionless robots. But I write this with one important assumption: that you aren't trying to fall in love with your pain. You're not using this sad moment to milk drama and stoke self-pity. You feel bad...and you'd honestly like to feel better. If so, this will help. If not, the following will upset you by minimizing exactly what you're trying to maximize! So consider carefully before proceeding.

Here's the question which you must ask yourself - relentlessly, again and again: What is real, and what isn't? Keep shaving off all the layers of untruth and drama. Slice away until you get to the real part, and then let that hurt (open yourself all the way to this pain; don't deflect it). You do not need to find fake reasons for heightening your pain. Deal with what's real.

Below are a few typical falsehoods (there are many more). They're things we've seen people saying in movies, so we have an unconscious urge to say them, ourselves. But they're just empty memes:

"Poor him/her!"
Whatever you believe regarding afterlife, your dearly departed is certainly not hurting. You can repeat "Poor him/her" ad infinitum, making yourself more and more miserable, but it's not a real thing. You're just hypnotizing yourself, and that's self-indulgence, not grief. "Poor him/her" is not true. Slice it off.

"She/he will never get to see/do X"
We, the living, miss out on things all the time. I'll never play quarterback for the Jets, and most likely none of us will celebrate our grandchildren's 75th birthdays. So what? This isn't the sort of thing we particularly sweat, so why would it be any more so for the dead? And if someone checks out at a low point, missing the happy turnaround, well, that's just normal odds! How many ecstatic peaks have you experienced? And would you have been particularly happy to have died during one them?

So young!
We all die young (at heart, we're the same person we were since we first opened our eyes; we only pretend to be grown-up). This meme, too, has to do with a person's "story", not the actual person. It's not real. Beneath the story-telling, we are ageless presences who watch stuff unfold. This, from their point of view, was just another thing that unfolded - and unfolds for each of us. It's not dramatic in any way. Don't try to make it so.

What a lousy way to go!
Accounts of gristly deaths used to really upset me. But I'm old enough now to have actually lived through some gristly stuff, and you know what? It was all just stuff. Broken bones and root canals seriously hurt! But such things don't ruin our lives. We get through them, and relief follows. Rest assured all suffering's over. It's natural to sympathize with pain, but, question: Did you sob for days when your cousin broke her ankle skiing?

I'll miss him/her.
Ok, now that's real. And that's all that's real. Everything else is just stuff you're telling yourself to heighten the drama and pain. Stay with what's real, open up to it, and let it subside, gradually, to a more manageable level. That's actual grieving, not cinema. Stay with the true!

A couple of years after I first published this, and having lost my mother in the interim, I see that there's still more falsehood to be shaved off. Even "missing" isn't entirely real.

I find myself missing her in instances where I could use guidance or an opinion...and then I remember that I can no longer turn to her for that, and feel a sense of loss and disconnection. Very sad, no? But here's the bizarre thing: I never sought out my mother's guidance. That wasn't her thing (she had other good attributes). She was never that sort of mother, even in her prime, and she hadn't been in her prime for a quarter century. Yet, every few days, I find myself crestfallen about losing something I never actually had!

We all hold a "Mother" idea (in an apron, with cherry pie cheeks and benevolent, nurturing smile) deep in the recesses of our imagination. And a "Father" and a "Child" and a "Husband" and a "Wife". They're images/ideals which may resemble the actual person only coincidentally, if at all. And since an imaginary image never dies, there's no reason to miss it. Deal with the loss of the actual person!

The impulse to torture ourselves with dramatized falsehoods has nothing to do with the departed. It's entirely about our own internal issues. And if you're this phenomenally upset about death, as an issue, that can only mean life is truly amazing. So why ruin precious alive time with unnecessary drama? If the departed saw you doing this, they'd slap their foreheads and holler "Stop! That's just crazy! Don't do that!! Especially not in my name!" They'd want you to mourn for a while, and then go out there and kick ass, relishing every moment.


Resilience is related.

You Can't Ever Be Famous

I ran into an old friend who's a bit famous now and appears to desperately crave more fame. Unable to control myself, I offered a provocative observation.

"You can't ever be famous."

Of course, he received this in the least thoughtful way, and began to explain how, dude, he's already famous.

"Which part of you is famous, though? Your elbows? Your ear lobes? Are your armpits famous?"

He thought it over, and replied "All of me!"

"No. Not all of you. Hardly even part of you. All that can be famous is your name. The label. And you're not the label. You're a three-dimensional person with an inner life and complex backstory. You're not your nametag (weren't you you before you had a name?), and only your name can be famous."

"My name is famous because of who I am and what I've done!"

"Are you sure of that? Let me ask you something. Are you a film fan?"

"No, not really."

"Good! You've heard of Ingmar Bergman, of course."

"Yes."

"Have you seen any of his filmes?"

"Nope."

"Good! Ok, say you're at a dinner part and Ingmar Bergman turned out to be sitting next to you. Would you be excited?"

"Sure! He's a major figure!"

"So without ever having seen his work or knowing anything about him, you'd nonetheless feel eager and appreciative?"

"Lots of people who do know his work love him, I know that."

"But are you sure they do? Maybe they caught a film in college, years ago, and have utterly forgotten it...mostly remembering the mere act of remembering it. Maybe they hollowly mention his name to make themselves seem savvy. And of those who've made a serious study of Bergman, how many have really keyed in and gotten him - fully appreciating not just the movies as movies but his unique personal contribution in any deep way? Maybe a few hundred, max. And of them, how many know the actual man, beyond interviews and such? How many know what he likes for breakfast?"

"You're being ridiculous!"

"Am I? Back in the Chowhound days, I met a slew of people who recognized my name, got slightly breathless (embarrassing me at first, when I still assumed it had something to do with actual me), and then began chatting me up about, like, trendy restaurants, making it clear they had no idea of me or my work. Just the name. And the name's enough, because that's where the fame hangs; on the name.

Even those with actual familiarity rarely/never showed deep recognition beyond a sense of my voice and vibe. 99% of fame attaches to a name tag, and the remainder - the best case scenario! - recognizes an overarching vibe; an aroma. And that obviously is not who we are. That's why I say a person can't be famous."

"Well, I don't need complete appreciation. I'm happy just to have my name out there!"

"Great! But, then, I have a suggestion: Buy yourself a dozen parakeets, and train them to speak your name. You'll hear it ringing out unceasingly."

I know several mothers who trained their toddlers, early on, to rotely utter "I love you, Mommy," encouraging this behavior via standard psychological feedback actions (none was so gauche as to hand out cookies, like rewarding a dog for heeling, but they all came awfully close). The parakeet thing is not so far-fetched.

See also:
"Fans"
"Obama's Way (and the Dissociation of Fame)"
"Explaining Salinger"

Survival Bias, Supermodels, and Worldly Algorithms

Does everyone's worldly existence unfold according to the same rules and probabilities? The question has consumed me since childhood. If disliked people turned kindly, would they be admired? If self-destructive people took better care of themselves, would their lives be smooth? Is the world, in other words, a clean algorithm where input determines output, or do some of us experience irrevocably different results (above/beyond chance and initial circumstance)?

I once read an interview with a supermodel who claimed that her beauty stems from her inner self. She thinks positively; she cares for herself and treats other people right; she does yoga. And, voila: heart-stopping beauty. Anyone can be beautiful, she insisted, but it was easy to recognize the real message behind the platitude: the problem with the rest of us isn't genetic, it's that we're simply not doing life right. And she's not just lucky, she's better, generally. Daffy though it sounds, this is a natural conclusion from the widely-held assumption that we all share a constant input/output formula.

It's not just about beauty. There's a survival bias that makes people who've succeeded in any particular realm assume they deserve credit - and, more generally, done life correctly. You must, of course, ignore mountains of evidence: people with immense inner beauty who look like hell; people with super-smart ideas that failed; people who prayed/believed and were kicked in the ass; people with impeccable courtesy and empathy who spent their lives being sneered at; people who dieted, exercised, and thought positively and got cancer.

If the rules were constant, that would mean recluses, for example, are failures for not having done better. They clearly missed the normal marks normal people hit to get normal worldly results. If they'd adjusted their input, the output would have been more pleasing. They had the same potential as anyone, but failed to make it happen.

At this age, having known a huge swathe of people - from movie stars to crackheads, angels to murderers - and having been, myself, at least a half dozen people, plying diverse careers amid diverse circles - I can state with certainty that it's absolutely not the same for everyone. So those who've been trounced do not necessarily have no one but themselves to blame. Recluses aren't always hapless failures, and their choice might even make sense. One can't possibly understand their experience by projecting one's own. The results of identical effort vary very widely.


Notes
1. That was my first use of the word "irrevocably" in ten years of slogging. High five.

2. This was absolutely not a political treatise. I'm no kind of Marxist; I find it condescending and morally perilous in nearly all cases to lower standards for "those poor dears who simply can't keep up." That wasn't my point at all. I confess, however, that this sort of observation led me to give up Libertarianism - the favored philosophy of the smugly successful and the ultimate projection of survival bias.

3. Successful people who smugly assume they "made it happen" not only ignore the multitudinous unrewarded virtue and unrecognized talent out there. They also ignore their own copious flaws and blocks and issues. Each and every one of them, had they failed, would be ripe and abundant pickings for explaining why.

The New iPhones Feel Like iPad Nanos

I said a couple of days ago that while the new iPhones look amazing, I'd be opting for a secondhand iPhone X to replace my iPhone 7. I got a chance to try out an iPhone 11 Pro for a few days, though, and while the reception is as bad as I feared in borderline areas (it's fine if there's a strong signal), here were my other findings.

1. I have some games (e.g. PacMan 256 and Strategery) I only play on iPad, and would never think to try on a smaller-screen. But playing them on the intense, generous OLED screen of the 11 Pro was astonishingly comfortable. For the same reason, reading is much more enjoyable on the 11 Pro than on the 7.

2. Audio on the 11 Pro is incredible; totally blowing away even my iPad. I realize they compute the wazoo out it (same for the camera, which does its work much more via algorithmic calculation than lensing and aperture), and, sure enough, the processing is flagrant; nobody's idea of natural - much less audiophile - sound. But it nonetheless feels richly intimate and "wow". It blew me away.

3. After three days with the 11 Pro, I curiously don't feel disappointed returning (temporarily) to my iPhone 7. It's exactly like putting down an iPad and picking up an iPhone. The larger screen size of the 11 Pro; plus the "big-boy" sound/audio; plus the weighty heft of the thing; plus the easier readability; all contribute to make it feel much more like an iPad. It's sort of like an iPad Nano.

Irritating Aristocrats via the Provocation to Think

Readers are unhappy when I write at length. It seems like I'm indulgently running my mouth. Blah blah blah.

Yet readers also dislike dense writing. If their food isn't cut up for them, pre-masticated, and spit down their gullets, it all feels opaquely impenetrable.

The two complaints are in flat contradiction, of course (unpacking dense writing requires ample space), which has bugged me, but I finally realized I'd been overthinking it (speaking of which, have you noticed that I changed the Slog's tagline, above, a few months ago?). I learned long ago to pay little attention to people's explanations for why they do things. Stated self-explanations are usually just retroactive self-justification.

So what's being justified here? Readers don't want to make an effort, period. Lengthy writing requires effort. Succinctly dense writing requires effort. From my standpoint, I'm damned either way, but, from their standpoint, they're just not super into the whole thinking/learning thing, which makes my stuff seem exasperating.

The third way for a reader to justify disinterest in making an effort is to label anything profound, mind-bending, and/or assumption-challenging "philosophy", per the introduction here. "I'm not interested in philosophy" is a euphemism for "Don't expect me to show interest in anything beyond slickly predigested snarky tidbits."

There are two strands: 1. lazy unwillingness to input, process, and think; and 2. aversion to anything that might challenge assumptions or change minds. Re: the latter, we've reached the endgame of confirmation bias. People can only tolerate wee semantic nuggets aligning with foregone conclusions. They don't wish to to consider anything baked fresh, especially when it conflicts with prior assumptions, which feel inviolable.

It helps to bear closely in mind that everyone in the First World at this point functions as a Mrs. Howell-ish aristocrat. That's what makes our assumptions and opinions feel sacrosanct. Those things are the very foundation of me, and I am very, very special.


I'm friends with a lot of Guatemalan and Ecuadoran immigrants. They're extremely sensible and level-headed - they know how to actually get stuff done and get out of their own damned way - and not one of them displays this absurd and unearned confidence in their every assumption, conclusion, and intuition. They're not special radiating beings. They don't imagine they fart pixie dust. They're more like sincere, committed worker ants. I, too, am a worker ant, and I vehemently believe (as any sincere, committed worker ant would, I suppose) that that's the best approach and that everyone else has utterly Lost Perspective.

Obligatory reality check: Of course, it might be that my writing isn’t worth the effort. Don’t imagine for a second that I fail to seriously entertain the possibility, and use it to coax myself to do my very best. At this point, I am, for the first time in my life, mildly satisfied with the work I’m doing. And while that’s likely as high as my self-assessment can go, I remain open to the possibility that it still isn’t worth readers’ effort. Maybe I can do better!

Apple Catch-Up

Lots to catch up with, Apple-wise. I'll touch briefly upon the new iPhones, iOs 13, Apple Arcade, and the stock price:

Stock
I bought a slew of AAPL stock last January when it dropped to $145, and will sell after it levels off (I'm hoping for $250), once my purchase is a year old so I can pay low long term gain taxes. I've done this a half dozen times now; it's mostly how I pay the bills. Rinse and repeat. As I've explained a zillion times (most recently here):

The risk is that it won't recover next time - that the most successful company in the history of the world, sitting on a cash pile of $250 billion, will shrivel up and die because of some fleeting issue.

I just don't see that as a real risk. That cash hoard alone - which doesn't even do anything! - dwarfs the total market value of all but seven other corporations. Apple could throw their entire mega-successful business in the garbage and buy Starbucks, Boeing, and Goldman Sachs. If customers update their iPads more slowly than expected, or a phone antenna doesn't work properly, or a new product line undersells expectations, that's just not going to cause a death spiral. I'm not saying they'll be dominant forever...but the downside of buying at Apple's inevitable 30% bullish downturns strikes me as minimal.

iPhone 11
The new iPhones are wonderful, and will be a huge hit - especially the 11 Pro. However there's one aspect that's been mostly under-radar amid all the hype: they use weak Intel modems. These modems caused reception issues with the XR and XS, and there's no reason to expect the new models to be much better. If you're mostly on wifi, no biggie, but I'll upgrade my iPhone 7 to an iPhone X - two models back - and enjoy the good Qualcomm modem (note: some, not all, iPhone 8 and iPhone X have the right modem. Qualcomm modem phones have a model number of A1865, while ones with Intel modems have a model number of A1901). I'll buy on eBay from someone with 100% feedback, years of eBay history, and thorough photos and descriptions. I haven't gotten burned yet.

iOs 13
If you already have an iPhone or iPad, don’t upgrade to iOs13. It's buggy. Wait for v 13.1, which comes out in a week or so. Maybe even wait for 13.2.

Also, I'm a fan of the "Take Control" series of books on Apple tech, and this guide to iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 will surely be helpful. As is the screencast by the great Don McAllister of ScreenCasts Online, a service I highly recommend. Here's a preview of the iOS/iPadOS 13 screencast, which you can watch in its entirety if you sign up for a free 7-day trial.

Apple Arcade
For $4.99/month, Apple Arcade lets you play zillions of amazing games on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, and/or Apple TV, with none of the in-app-purchases that have been ruining gaming. I'm normally more of an ala carte consumer, preferring to ferret out treasures one-by-one - but this is irresistible, even though I'd never play more than a small fraction (I particularly loathe super-realistic "real world" games - they're either make me hyper-aware of the cheesy shortfall, or else they're creepy in an uncanny valley way and make me wonder why I'm not just outside doing stuff). Check out this two minute supercut trailer: