Mid-winter tiny letter
SKIP THIS IF YOU WANT TO GET TO THE MORE POSITIVE STUFF
The problem that plagues all societies
I've been thinking lately about China, and what structures, rules, and cultural norms led to the spread (and cover-up of the origin) of the coronavirus. As I see it, China's biggest problem is it's authoritarian government. Not only do they limit speech, movement, privacy, and open commerce, but they've also inculcated a culture of ignorance. It is my understanding that a substantial percentage of young adults in China have no knowledge of what happened in Tiananmen Square. It's amazing that this ignorance can persist alongside widespread Internet access. Although to be sure, China has managed to heavily censor the Internet for its citizens.
Imagine being a Chinese 23-year-old, and taking your first vacation abroad in Melbourne, Australia. Suddenly, every news source, Wikipedia, and everything else that makes up the Internet is telling you what really happened in your country. It's like discovering you are a character in The Truman Show, or learning about the Matrix. Do you spend your days at the beach, carefree, or catching up on history?
But why is China authoritarian? Is there something quintessentially "Chinese" about this form of government? No, first off, that sounds racist/xenophobic, and it's also simply untrue. Taiwan has a democracy, and Hong Kong sort of has one, which China is intent on dismantling.
I think China suffers under authoritarianism for the same reason that Americans suffer under the selfishness, ignorance, and self-dealing of its legislators: power. If we look around the world where people are suffering, one of the root causes is that the rich and powerful want to stay that way, and brook little compromise that would address injustice.
Look at Russia. They flirted with democracy when the Berlin wall fell, but now they are essentially a dictatorship under Putin.
Whether we are talking about a weak democracy, like the United States’, or a country that never had one, like China, the problem is the same. It's not about authoritarianism versus democracy, but rather sharing of power and wealth versus hoarding it. People in power simply don't want to give it up.
My dear friend Jena and I often puzzle over the choices of the wealthy. Why have three homes that you never visit, when you can use your wealth to fuck shit up*?
*Irreverent billboards, shaming of public figures who deserve it, Yes Men-style stunts, performance art, etc. Think about the artist Banksy, who created a piece of artwork that shredded itself.
I think it would be a lot more fun, and a much more fulfilling life, to spend one's wealth and power making things better, and puncturing the power and egos of our most uncompassionate "leaders".
“No Meetings, No Deadlines, No Full-Time Employees”
Gumroad is a shopping cart/payment processing app that helps creators sell their products and services with a minimum of technical fiddling. I currently use it to sell my book on website planning, and since this is the only product I sell, installing and managing e-commerce software would be overkill. It's also a major pain in the ass. Instead, I use Gumroad. It works seamlessly, and the company just takes a cut of each sale.
I recently read about their rare and lucrative business model. Essentially, they have a few dozen employees, each one sets their own schedule, works a different number of hours, but it seems, never over 40. Some employees just work one or two days per week. Everyone is remote, works asynchronously, and salaries are not tied to one's location.
Unlike in most companies, the focus is not on accelerated growth, but simply on improving the product and providing more value to its users. It seems that for nearly everyone who works there, their job is just a means to an end, a way to earn money so they can spend more of their time doing what they love, be it making art, studying something, or anything but sitting at a screen.
There are no meetings, and no deadlines.
It sounds like a dream.
However, there is a catch. Just as we all can't be executives and managers, making elevated salaries, society can't thrive on companies like this. Without a focus on growth, they don't add employees. That means working for the company is framed by the old saying, "great work, if you can get it". Unlike a classic "make work" Union job, a position at Gumroad requires strong skills and work ethic. Kudos to them for finding a business model that works for everyone. Too bad it can't scale.
Haptic (touch feedback) device impresses even me!
Okay, let me try to explain this clearly. Haptic feedback is touch feedback. That is, haptics refers to the sensation on your skin from, for example, wind, a hug, or as grandpa used to say, “a potch on the tuchus”. The Stratos device describes “virtual tactile sensations projected onto your hands”. It does this using an array of ultrasonic speakers. Ultrasonic frequencies are too high for your ear to pick up (although they might cause Fido to freak out).
Those who know me will recall that even though I work with technology all day, I am exhausted by it, and am rarely a fan boy for whatever is considered "the new hotness". I don't own videogame consoles, I don't care about Fortnite or Grand Theft Auto XIVI. If you try to talk to me about Linux at a party, I will be truly disappointed. But I am really impressed by this technology.
There are myriad possibilities for haptic feedback.
To give but one, imagine someone who has suffered a stroke or injury of some kind which has dulled the feedback from their sensory nerves. Haptic feedback could help them through rehabilitation. It would also allow us to interface with computers without an input device. No mouse, no keyboard, not even a touchscreen. You would simply wave your hands in the air.
Or visualize, for example, playing a piano in the air, and you are not just moving your hands and fingers, but you are getting feedback (pressure) as if playing an actual keyboard.
“Rät” by Penelope Scott, lyrical brilliance
Most pop songs are about love. Finding it, losing it, looking for it, etc. Has this changed much in 50 years? Not really. No one wants to hear a new jam that's about actuarial science, engineering, or working at a law firm. Unless, I suppose, the song is exceptional. Rät is one of those.
I come from scientists and atheists and white men who kill God
They make technology high quality, complex, physiological
Experiments and sacrilege in the name of public good
They taught me everything, just like a daddy should
And you were beautiful and vulnerable and power and success
God damn, I fell for you, your flamethrowers, your tunnels, and your tech
I studied code because I wanted to do something great like you
And the real tragеdy is half of it was true
While the music won't win any awards for instrumentation or production value, the lyrics are beyond brilliant. The song is about the author's disillusionment with Silicon Valley, and the dreams we have been sold.
Can Factory-Built Homes Help Solve The Housing Crisis?
Here in Madison, there is very little open land on which to build. And like many vibrant cities, we are a victim of our own success. In short, housing is unaffordable here. I have no experience in construction, and couldn't frame a door to save my life. But I am peripherally familiar with the industry, and have heard again and again that it is stubbornly resistant to change. My dad remarks that, if you took a carpenter from 100 years ago and brought them to 2021, construction methods would be pretty familiar. Cement foundation, frame rooms with 2X4s, attach walls, siding, roof.
It will take a lot to make housing more affordable, but one key is innovation in construction methods. This video gives a nice overview of two companies' efforts at a certain type of pre-fab, modular construction that can reduce costs by as much as 40%.
Covering faces around kids won’t mask emotions
Every other Sunday, I babysit two boys, ages 4 and 7. Since the pandemic started, our field trips have been quite limited. No Children’s Museum, no restaurants and coffee shops, and sadly, when we play at city parks, I have to remind them to keep their distance from other children. One wonders of the impact of social distancing and masking on children's development. At least some good news here, it appears children can still gauge emotion even when we are masked.
THIS ONE IS PERFECT FOR MY CONFIRMATION BIAS
Why you won't find many children's books set in the suburbs
I'm just going to quote at length from this article. It just about says all I need to say. I want to avoid the polarizing trend, and not say, simply suburbs = bad, cities = good. However, suburbs, at their extremes, stifle serendipity, discovery, and imagination. When I drive through the worst of them, I picture the lives of children, and how they engage with their peers. If nearly every interaction requires “dad, will you give me a ride to Lang’s house”, which is 5 miles away, separated by high-speed throughways, unwalkable all, what does this teach the child about self-reliance?
Once upon a time, there were four little rabbits, and their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter. They lived with their mother in a sandbank underneath the root of a very big fir tree. One day, their mother dropped them off at soccer practice and picked them up promptly afterward. When they got home, they all had bread and milk and blackberries.
That is roughly how the classic Beatrix Potter story from 1902 would go if it had been set in the American suburbs. But even if Potter hadn’t set her books in England’s Lake District, she would never have chosen a suburban setting. The suburbs kill the narrative adventure that is the lifeblood of children’s literature.
To simplify, the antithesis of North American suburbia is walkability, and picture books with literary merit love walkability. Compelling children’s stories require that their characters are able to navigate their setting at a pedestrian scale and pace. For example, in the US author Arnold Lobel’s classic stories of the 1970s, Frog and Toad never appear in a car, despite being thoroughly anthropomorphised. What most draws the reader into the stories are the adventures that the amphibians experience between their houses – in the meadow, the woods and the tall grass. They climb mountains and swim in ponds, but they also walk everywhere: to fly a kite, to buy ice-cream, to fulfil a to-do list.
On contrairianism
I was listening to a podcast of Real Time with Bill Maher. He hosted two guests, evolutionary biologists, made the claim that is very likely the novel coronavirus originated in a lab, and that the reason this hypothesis was not taken more seriously, is that it would appear to align us with Tr*mp and xenophobic nonsense. Listening to this discussion, and how calm and reasonable the guests appear, I started to believe that perhaps this was in fact true. Then I thought about it some more, and searched for any credentialed person or institution also making this claim. I couldn't find anyone. This doesn't mean the claim is incorrect, but I am more inclined to trust Scientific American magazine over two scientists.
I found angry leftists trying to discredit the guests, dismissing them for other perceived failings, but not addressing their primary claim. And I'm sure if I had looked, I would have found people on the far right pointing, saying "see, it was China all along”, which lines up nicely with their own confirmation bias.
I really just want to know what is true. I'm sure it's possible that the virus was developed in the lab, and it's possible that it was released inadvertently, or either on purpose. But can we find out for sure?
Maher and his guests have a right to free speech, and to make unsubstantiated claims just as any crazed QAnon supporter (I suppose “crazed” is redundant). But it is irresponsible to provide a platform for these claims without challenging them. And that, perhaps, is my biggest problem with Maher, Joe Rogan, etc., people with substantial platforms and audiences who don't take their guests to task.
If you want to have Mr. or Mrs. Looney Tunes on, go ahead, but challenge them, and push back with facts and evidence.
QUOTES TO CONSIDER
Keep your identity small. “I’m not the kind of person who does things like that” is not an explanation, it’s a trap. It prevents nerds from working out and men from dancing.
- Conor Barnes
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We're further apart than we ever were and we think it's normal.
- David Agasi
No seas pandejo, mano
A portmanteau I learned: “pandejo”. Spanish for covidiot.
Pandemia (pandemic) + Pendejo (asshole) = pandejo!
Postscript
Finally, if you are not dismayed, disappointed, ordered, exhausted, anxious, or alienated during this pandemic, please drop me a line and tell me how you do it.
Vaccines are a-comin. My father will get his first shot next week, and I know a number of healthcare professionals who have already gotten on the vaccine train. Also, it appears the Russian vaccine is safe. I was skeptical, because countries that operate without transparency can fudge numbers, but it appears that it works.
Is it possible we can have a normal, crowded Halloween party this fall? If so, I want to show off my costume, which should consist of a 5G tower sticking out of my head, with a lit Bill Gates head rotating at the top, and a giant toy hypodermic needle full of microchips sticking out of my sleeve. (Just picture it).