LIFESTYLE Newsletter Vol. 6 No. 4
Nick’s LIFESTYLE Newsletter Vol. 6 No. 4
Literally everything I love about wrestling
THIS IS AN INTRODUCTION
Hello again everyone. It's been a few months. Weeks where I had 2 weeks off of work, the longest consecutive time away from work in 20.5 years. That is not something to celebrate, but to mourn about the American "work ethic." Weeks of seeing amazing music, opera, spending time with friends and firing up the karaoke lounge for some fun nights. Weeks of biking on my sweet new bike and not showering until 11a. Now spending the time running the retirement numbers to pinpoint the exact day I never have to go back. In some ways, I'm glad I didn't get my sabbatical, because I would never go back if I had more time off. Lots of bullets this issue and it's going to run long, so LET'S GO!
- Take the 30 mins to watching this incredible video from Kevin Smith about trauma. With all the therapy I have been in and around for the past 4.5 years, this is such a good and well spoken discussion about trauma.
- If you are of a certain age (mine) and spent some formative years playing Sierra Online adventure games (like King's Quest, Space Quest, etc.) then you will understand this IS THE BEST MUSIC VIDEO IN THE PAST 5 YEARS. Also, super excited for this album. Alan Palomo is the guy behind Vega and Neon Indian.
- PJ Vogt is back with a new podcast next month and he put out a preview episode. The podcast is called Search Engine and it is answering questions the internet has. Yep, pretty basic but he's got the journalistic chops to do this well. I've been a fan of his since his days on On the Media. The first episode is "How sad are monkey's at the zoo?". I learned a lot, like how there are people in bands that visit monkeys and play for them and individual monkeys have definite music taste. Also, lots of monkeys in zoos were taken from their parents, which were killed in front of them to traumatize them. So, yeah, not changing my minds on zoos, but maybe I can hit the wildlife refugee tour circuit.
- Two amazing satire articles from the front lines of THE GREAT REGRESSION. Trans Teen Hatches Nefarious Plot To Undergo Years Of Medical Treatments And Counseling To Win At Swimming and A Day in the Life of a Woke Third-Grade Teacher, as Imagined by a Far-Right Politician
- Incredible reporting and something we don't see a lot of in relationship to all the gun violence (oops, I mean freedom). Yep, we totally need more of these in America :-( The Blast Effect - This is how bullets from an AR-15 blow the body apart
- BOOK PREORDERS ARE STILL A THING. If you haven't pre-ordered the new Mindy Mejia book, what are you waiting for?. Pre-orders are SUPER VITAL in the publishing industry.
- THE LAST BULLET. GOING BOLD FOR THIS ONE. Less than 1 week left to support FRIEND OF THE LIFESTYLE Seppy with his new game, Conquest Princess: Fashion is Power. If you believe in FRIENDS. If you believe in supporting local forces for good in the gaming industry. If you believe in queer as fuck independent gaming, get your ass to Gamefound and pledge for a copy. HERE IS THE LINK. DO IT NOW
ITEM THE FIRST:
TECHNOLOGY, AIN'T IT A BITCH. About 2 months ago I was having a conversation with a FRIEND OF THE LIFESTYLE and wanted to show them a picture. I had the picture in my mind and I knew who was in it, so I opened Apple Photos and searched for the person. It had FAR fewer results than I knew were there. I couldn't find the photo and we moved on. After they left, I looked at Photos in the large and my heart sank as I saw that Apple decided their ML technology was better than my hand crafting. THEY WERE WRONG.
Every month for the past 14 years since I switched to Apple, I reviewed my new photos and tagged them with location and face data if the algorithm didn't pick up on it. Since Apple did not recognize specific pets (and won't until this fall), I manually tagged hundreds of photos of my cats so I could enjoy then cry watching them.
Apple, in their infinite wisdom, wiped out all the manual face data I've curated over years. FUCK YOU APPLE. Now, I'm manually tagging things with Keywords like it is 2001 and spun up a docker container with PhotoPrism to back everything up. Apple lost my trust with Apple Music switching music on me years ago (see Vol. 4, No. 4 - DEPLATFORMING (the good kind)) and now they've lost me on Photos. Why they removed manual metadata without permission blows my mind.
It took me a few weeks to go through 15k photos and re-tag everything and now I eye Apple platforms, services and software with a more skeptical eye.
ITEM THE SECOND:
TECHNOLOGY, AIN'T IT A BITCH (Also, WE ARE DOOMED). Read anything about AI lately? Things are moving quick. First, the entertaining bits:
AI imagines a Beatles over of The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows". Of course the video linked to that has been taken down because...copyright? Not sure legally how it would apply here but good thing lawyers are so expensive so you can't stand up to big corporations.
Here is something similar that is still up, so take a listen: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Paul McCartney Cover (AI). This is an AI trained on early Paul McCartney singing Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and holy crap is it convincing. This is amazing and has a ton of ramifications that we can't even conceive of yet (see above on copyright, for example). Rick Beato has a good 10 min video on this topic:
Seriously tho, listen to that Elton John "cover."
Now, the flip side. AI generated content is basically flooding the internet with sludge and soon I think it will be very hard to find reliable information and determine what is genuine human content and machine content. I know my company is working very hard on AI generative content so they can lay off even more people. Reddit may have been one of the last bastions of humanity, but now that platform is on the decline (see next item) and the future is federated, we are going to see some real shit. Just a few articles about it:
AI-Generated Junk Is Flooding Etsy and How AI Could Take Over Elections—And Undermine Democracy
Critical thinking skills and media/technology literacy is even more vital than ever and since it is not on the test, I'm guessing it is not heavily covered in schools. It certainly did not feel like it when I was an academic librarian a few years ago.
ITEM THE THIRD:
EARLY PICK FOR WORD OF THE YEAR: ENSHITTIFICATION.
Inspiration of the LIFESTYLE and author of my second favorite fiction book about forensic accounting, Cory Doctorow, did the rounds for his new book talking about the "enshittification of the internet". Remember a few years when he discussed Chickenization (see Vol. 3, No. 8)?
I think it was coined on this blog post from January. The whole post is a MUST READ, but here is a little quote:
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
Cory did a great hour or so in a 3-part series on On The Media, check it out here: Enshittification.
Enshitification encapsulates a lot of my feelings about the internet right now. I'm so glad I got out of Facebook years ago. Twitter is now a shithole taken over by right-wing trolls and I think Reddit is going to go the same way soon since they are doing everything in their power to push out the active users. I've been on the Internet since 1991 (Gopher and Usenet, ride or die) and what was once a place of hope for equality and information access became a corporate, ad-serving profit seeking commercial endeavor, then a place to connect, then a place to realize you didn't want to connect to now just a landfill, full of toxic sludge.
Tragedy of the commons, indeed.
ITEM THE FOURTH:
Got a few responses to the 2023 COMMUNITY PROJECT, MONEY RULES. Good to see other people's perspectives on it, but I have found out my readers love giving LIFESTYLE UNSOLICITED ADVICE, much more than money rules. Maybe that is because money is more taboo, or maybe less people are reading my rantings?
While 2023 is THE YEAR OF NICK (see Vol. 6 No. 2, it is also the year of de-stigmatizing things that happen to us all but we don't talk about (like going to therapy or naming your fears). I would like to celebrate that this year we finally passed into the 7 digit club for our net worth. It is a wonderful feeling to see 15 years of saving paying off. We celebrated the win by getting Mexican and the delicious (and located in a Eagan gas station!?!?), El Sazon.
As a reminder, here are my money rules:
- Always tip at least 25%
- Spend at least 1.5% of income on charity.
- Don’t budget for groceries. Celebrate and buy the weird or scary things you see.
- Always buy dinner for people that are not currently doing as well as you are.
- Support your friends in all their artistic endeavors as much as you can.
Here are some reader rules (combined/edited for content):
- Only spend money on things you NEED and on things you LOVE.
- Whenever possible, save XX% of my pay for emergency fund and XX% for retirement.
- Save XX% of pay for travel, use my vacation time every year to go somewhere new.
- Buy birthday and Christmas gifts, and one new piece of art per year
- Be generous when people are in need, without them even asking. Pick up the tab more often when out with friends or family.
- The tooth fairy brings $2 bills.
- Gift cards should always be used for gift (fun buck) purchases.
- Have all major vacation components (flight/hotel/car) paid in advance and visit somewhere new every year.
- Review spending annually to see where the money is actually going and make adjustments.
- Divide retirement investments between tax deferred and Roth accounts.
- Only buy clothes that are on sale. I don't care about fashion at all. If you really want something use your birthday or Christmas gift capital and ask for it as a gift. If you get it its yours, if you don't it never was.
- Don't buy whisky at a restaurant.
- When you decide to donate to a cause, don't look back.
- Don't be so uptight about trading money for time, or money for someone to perform a task that is way better at it than you.
- It’s ok to spend money on experiences and not feel guilty if they cost more than you want to spend.
- Let my waistline be the reason to not buy that fancy dessert or coffee, not the price.
- Treat myself and make sure to buy things I will enjoy. But don’t buy something just to buy it.
- Live within your means.
- Avoid putting yourself into debt wherever possible.
- Buy the higher-quality item that will last longer and that you like more over the cheaper item to "save money." Those cheaper options usually don't function as well and you'll probably have to replace it sooner, which can also end up being more expensive to you in the long run.
Lots of opinions around these:
- Pay some bills by check, so those fuckers can't hold onto your auto-withdrawed money while you attempt to settle a dispute with them.
- Always try to save and keep money on hand for large purchases. If possible, always take the 0% APR option, even if you have the money to pay for it.
- Avoid using credit cards to pay for things if you can help it. I realize you can do so strategically to come out ahead, but if you're not eternally vigilant, you're gonna slip up at some point and the credit card company will win. If you want to play that game, go for it. Personally, though, I prefer to avoid that variable bit of financial stress.
- Pay in cash for big ticket items whenever you can; it will save you money in the long run.
For years, we played the 0% APR game as we tried to squeeze every penny and with my personality and tracking of things, it worked out, but it doesn't for a lot of people. It is a tightrope over a pit of razorblades. So, I understand the diversity of opinions here and ultimately, you need to do what is best for you and your ability.
We pay for almost everything on a credit card, paid off weekly. We are fortunate and I can use my super powers to keep on top of things, so I haven't paid a dime of credit card interest since 2001.
Lots of other consistent themes around being conscious of spending money for time, something that becomes more valuable by the year. Also, save money on things you don't care about, spend on things you do. For some it is clothing, for others it is yard work. It is a position of luxury we all have being older and wiser and it would be interesting to share this with our younger selves, because I know for me, the trade offs would be very different.
Lastly, one more response that would not fit into the above bulleted list, but I think it is ultimately the best summary of the above and written way more eloquent than I could ever muster. THANK YOU TO THIS SPECIAL FRIEND OF THE LIFESTYLE.
When I sat down to write a list of rules, I couldn't help thinking of vapid click-bait listicles that I loathe, so I ended up with one general rule and 4 nested footnotes (which somehow morphed into a curmudgeonly commentary on modern consumer society). I hope it's sufficient. And if it's not sufficient, and you must have a list of explicit rules, I mostly endorse the rules that appear in chapter 19 of The Psychology of Money.
Okay, here's the rule:
Learn what brings you meaning, happiness, and fulfillment[1]. Adjust your financial habits accordingly[2].
[1] Likely, most of this will not entail anything that can be purchased[1.1] or commodified[1.2].
[1.1] But be wary of compelling voices that try to convince you otherwise (marketing, advertising, etc).
[1.2] That includes you too! Resist the pressure to treat yourself (or anyone really) as a product. Seriously. It's a pernicious form of alienation that's endemic.
[2] Be sure to account for your own tendency to overestimate or underestimate the marginal benefits of having or spending more. Periodic recalibration may be necessary. Enough is the operative word.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (please mark "ok to print"):
In response to my bullet from last issue - What is a better way to live? Ranking friends or treating everyone the same? Asking for a friend (of either greater or equal stature), I received this incredible and insightful response that has helped me frame this internal struggle.
Regarding the concept of ranking friends vs treating all friends equally, I'd have to say neither option is particularly good.
Ranking friends will cause you to constantly evaluate and compare your friends against one another. Even if they aren't aware of it, you'll still be more likely to hone in on flaws, especially when two or more friends are "closely ranked." Sure, one could argue that the focus will be on the positives and not the negatives, but those negatives will invariably worm their way into your thought process and adversely affect your perception of your friend as a person. There's also the issue of having to constantly adjust rankings when friends do something annoying or especially ingratiating. You run the risk of de-humanizing your friends in your own eyes and turning them into little more than bundles of statistics.
Treating all friends equally, while perhaps noble in theory, is also problematic in reality. In this case, you run the risk of creating a situation where no one feels particularly "special" in terms of their relationship with you. Strictly sticking to the "equality" model can cause you to refrain from doing certain things for or with a friend for fear of showing a misplaced sense of favoritism, effectively cutting off avenues for growing or deepening an existing friendship.
Gun to my head, I guess I'd choose the equality option, but otherwise both options are worthy of rejection. It's okay to have differing relationships with your friends. There will likely be certain activities or topics of conversation that mesh well with some and not with others. Different friends will also be more or less open to cultivating deeper friendships or opening up to you about personal or painful issues in their lives, and that's perfectly ok. The important thing is to take each person as they are and to let the friendship grow and evolve organically. Interactions with friends will ebb and flow as everyone's life changes. However, as long as you can still unconditionally consider one another as friends—despite life's many monkey wrenches, or even long stretches of time apart—it becomes easy to fall right back into the good times whenever the opportunity presents itself.
THANK YOU for this response. I'm constantly worrying about de-humanizing people since I tend to see everything as numbers and try to quantify it since feelings and intuition don't work as well in my brain. I appreciate our years of friendship, FRIEND.
Dear LIFESTYLE Newsletter,
As a long time reader, I am overjoyed to hear that you're happier to be alive than in previous years.
As a fan, this is very exciting news. Can you prioritize the below list by contribution to this happiness trend?
- Oatmeal
- How to build a sex room
- Someone you know winning money for say "my humps" on television
Thanks again for sharing your journey. Sincerely, Calibrating Funster
Thank you for the well-wishes FRIEND. 2023 has been an incredible year so far and I think it will only get better.
However, in the interest of EQUALITY and the above letter, I'M NOT RANKING. I have a different relationship to all 3.
- Oatmeal is wonderful and makes me heart healthy.
- How to Build a Sex Room was inspirational and was a real close second place to the music room. Maybe we can incorporate a Saint Andrews cross in the music room? I did mention to Melonie about putting a lighting truss in there, so we have POSSIBILITIES.
- Seeing a FRIEND OF THE LIFESTYLE succeed in anything makes me happy.
MANDATORY FUN BUCKS MANDATORY UPDATE:
It's been so long, I have two months of updates!
April:
- I bought this picture for Melonie to hang at work to support our favorite coffee creator and because it works for Melonie: Weird Coffee Person
- Supported my OG favorite detective by pledging for the FIRST EVER NANCY DREW ACTION FIGURES!. I got The Hidden Staircase figure. Honestly, hard not to get all of them, but I'm not a clutter around the house person.
- A variety pack of goats milk soaps. Yep, baller.
May went a little off the rails because I bought a new bike! Here is a picture with my milk crate strapped to it when I got groceries.
I've been on a quest to visit all 58 Eagan parks on my bike and as of this writing, I have 7 to go. If weird pictures of me at a park looking confused is your yum, enjoy:
Anyways, the rest of the May fun bucks:
- I went to Target in need of sunglasses and a mission to buy the dumbest ones I could. MISSION SUCCESSFUL. As a FRIEND said, I look like an American Gladiator in them.
- I purchased the deluxe edition of Chris Connelly's 1992 album Phenobarb Bambalam. Very underrated songwriter, often reminds me of Bowie.
- A nice stud finder. For Melonie, obviously. I wish her the best of luck, but she's now got the best technology.
IN MEMORY
!
This is my friend Lance. Lance passed away suddenly on 11 May.
I met Lance in 2011 when me and Melonie started getting into board games and went to the monthly board game marathons. Lance was always warm and open to try anything. We became fast friends. Lance was one of the first game people we invited to our house and hung out with outside of marathon. He was also a regular at Tower and a majority of the reason I started going there, along with Dan.
Lance was a MACHINE at games. He just had the mind for them. He excelled at engine building games where he could find the way to exploit and extract maximum efficiency out of the game mechanisms. It was a running joke for YEARS when playing games with Lance that we were always fighting for 2nd.
One of his favorite games (and mine too) is Power Grid. Lance was so good at the game and to take that last paragraph to the extreme, Dan organized a yearly game of Power Grid. We all knew we would lose, so Dan made the 1st place trophy small and the 2nd place one huge. I won it once and Melonie as well.
My 2018 2nd place victory!
Melonie's 2019 2nd place victory!
Of all the games I have played, Lance is the person I played with the most outside of Melonie, 475 games in total since I started tracking in 2015. That is an incredible amount of time to spend with someone and we were friends outside of gaming. When COVID was a bigger thing, he was one of the people I stayed in touch with and we chatted often. He was one of the first people I invited over when it was safe and we played games together wearing our masks.
The last game I played with Lance was teaching him Tiletum, one of my favorites. My whole teaching style for games is what I refer to as the "Lance Standardized Teach" because I taught him a lot of games so I knew how to frame it to his brain. Anways, I knew the game would trigger all his buttons, but would also crunch his brain, so I was trying to find the right time to play it with him. At Tower, the week before he died, it just happened that everyone else was in games and it was just me and him. It was around the time I would consider leaving, but I said "fuck it" and asked him if he wanted to stay late and play, and of course he did. It was about 2 hours and we talked a lot about other things since was just us and a quiet night at Tower. He really enjoyed it and was looking forward to the next game, and of course he won. I'm glad I stayed late to have this time with him. Fuck. You never know when it will be the last time.
A few disjointed thoughts:
- One thing that I never noticed until Melonie pointed it out years ago (because I am a dumb white man) is that Lance was one of the only people that specifically thanked her and acknowledged her when we would have large board game parties. I was people's key contact so most people just talked with me. Lance would always make sure to interact with Melonie and even when she wasn't joining us, he would always ask her how she was doing and made sure to talk with her. It's not that board game people maliciously avoided her, they just ignored her, since they were "here for me." Lance never did.
- Lance really taught me a lot about generosity. He always brought a ton of food and drink to parties to share and was happy to leave the leftovers with the host. He would pick up the tab for things and really helped me shape some of my money rules above.
- Lance is the reason I love DURIAN, THE KING OF FRUITS. During the marathon days, we would drive to Midtown Global Market for dinner together. One of the places had a Durian shake and Lance always loved to try new things, so he bought it. I remember being "$7.95 for a shake that you probably won't like?!?! YOU ARE CRAZY" but he shared it with the table and I was smitten. Also, a reminder to try new things and in the scope of life, $8 is a deal to find out you don't like something. I spent $232k to find out the same.
- I think Lance was in a place to retire early, we would talk about it often and I know he was getting burned out at his job, like me and did a job similar to mine, so that hits me hard too.
- Lance was one of the few conservative people in my life, but wasn't a dick about it. A very traditional Republican, who had different ideas than mine on socialized health care, guns and taxes. He never said a bad thing around me about our LGBTQIA friends and was very accepting. It was good to have the occasional debate with him where we both respected our different positions. A real throwback to pre-1980's politics.
- Last time we played Battlestar Galactica I had a bunch of acid techno playing and after about 2 hours he looked to me and said: "Do you actually listen to this music? Like when you are not playing this game?" I laughed and said, yep, I paid for this album and it was a piece commissioned by the Guggenheim (it was Richie Hawtin's Ex album). He said "Hmmm," and we went along with the game. That was a very Lance response. He was also the only person I could discuss Merle Haggard and George Jones with.
I will miss Lance and all the times he showed up early/on time to our house and we just shot the shit for 20 mins. He is the definition of a good dude and I hope I can live up to that standard as he did.
FAVORITE THING TO GO IN MY EARHOLES THIS WEEK:
Cut due to length this issue.
THIS IS THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER
REMEMBER THIS TIME MAY BE THE LAST TIME.
THAT IS ALL.