February 16, 2022

Winter 2022 tiny letter

In praise of Instapaper

I have worked in tech since the late 90s, though I bristle when I am referred to as an IT guy. Sounds too much like the awkward dorks from the British TV show, or just the stereotype I'm trying to avoid. But as I deal with a lot of technology in my career and other interests, it's unavoidable.

At times, in the past, it used to be fun, or at least engaging, to figure out the operation of something new. Now, for me at least, it has become no fun at all. I have near-zero interest in learning new tech that will keep me further tethered to a screen. (He says, as he types this on a screen.)

Because of this, I am quite enamored with tech that just works. Well considered, thoughtfully designed, simple but not too simple.

One service I find especially useful is Instapaper. Reading on a monitor, tablet, or phone, is very fatiguing to the eyes. You are staring into a light source. Try it with a light bulb sometime, see how long you last. Instapaper allows you to push web pages and PDFs to an Amazon Kindle reader. I have an older model, but it still works fine. So if I come upon a web page with an article of more than a few hundred words, I often will push it to my Kindle for later reading. Setting this up is quite easy, and you can also email PDFs to the Kindle. Whether they are readable is quite hit or miss, but it works most of the time.

Yes, the Kindle is yet another screen, but it's e-ink, much clearer and easier on the eyes. Also, no distractions once you are inside an article. Just the article. No ads, no scrolling around, no flashing things, no auto play videos. Just what you want to read.

Crowdfunding cancer treatment and concealed carry, what do they have in common?

Thanks to a chat with the always thoughtful Paul, my exhausted synapses finally connected two seemingly unrelated things.

In the United States, due to our dumpster fire of a healthcare system (addressed here previously, but you all probably know what I’m talking about anyway), people often find themselves unable to pay for medical treatment or follow-up care, and they end up crowdfunding part or all of their needs. This is, of course, unconscionable in a wealthy “developed” country, but so it is.

Why do they do this? Because in one way or another, the system has failed them. They are not covered by insurance, or their insurance has a maximum, or…frankly, it doesn’t even matter. No one, even a lifetime smoker with lung cancer, should have to depend on the charity of friends and family to pay for their treatment.

Meanwhile, also in the United States, some individuals living in dangerous, sketchy, high crime neighborhoods may choose to carry a firearm, concealed, to defend themselves and their loved ones. I want to be careful to separate this decision from the broader arguments made by gun rights supporters for the moment — this is not about them. Let us just consider a single, apolitical human being who lives in terrible neighborhood, and has extenuating circumstances (nearby family, job, finances) that prevent an easy answer to the liberal’s question “so why don’t you just move?” In short, they can’t “just move.” So they carry a firearm. Statistically, this might not even be the wisest choice, but this isn’t about statistics, it’s about this human’s perception of personal safety.

Why do they do this? For the same reason: in one way or another, the system has failed them. To start, it has failed to identify the roots of criminal behavior and treat them early on.1 It has failed to provide properly trained and accountable police in sufficient numbers. In short, it has failed to keep neighborhood safe. Once again, no one should have to live in a place so crime-ridden that they feel compelled to carry a lethal weapon in their waistband. The responsibility for ensuring one’s safety should not fall so directly on the individual.

When we return to political leanings, these two seemingly unrelated issues don’t track exactly. For example, even if we were to bring violence crime levels in the United States down to the level of Japan (which would be totally awesome), I imagine gun rights supporters would not temper their demands, because many seem wedded to the idea of gun ownership and carry with minimal or no restrictions. Meanwhile, people on the left would be happy to see an end to crowdfunding of urgent medical treatment (but really, wouldn't we all?).

TL;DR to paraphrase The Dude from The Big Lebowski, “It’s all systems, man!”

Further TL;DR in Ben’s fantasy world—sure, you can carry concealed, provided you receive substantial training, background checks, regular psychological evaluation, obtain liability insurance, and can get three people to vouch for you. And a miracle cure for cancer is found deep within the molecules of tiramisu. (Hey, I said it was a fantasy.)

Latest binge watch: Archive 81

I'm always pleasantly surprised when the great algorithm in the sky recommends a show that turns out to be excellent. In Archive 81, Danny, a film and video archivist, is hired to salvage footage from a collection of camcorder tapes recovered from a building fire. The recordings begin to open a connection between his present day and the era of their recording. He comes to know the filmmaker Melody, a graduate student, not only by watching her tapes, but by connecting across time in a dream-like state.

Like many good stories, this one unfolds gradually, nothing is obvious at the beginning, loose ends are not necessarily tied up. Archive 81 creates a sense of dread and unease one would expect in horror/sci-fi, but it avoids the cheap scares typical of the genre. No monsters appearing around corners, no killers trapping the victim in a room with no exit. The absence of these clichés make the story much more powerful.

There is only one season, a brilliant story arc, but I hope there will be another.

Hunger makes me a modern girl

Carrie Brownstein’s band Sleator-Kinney was a mainstay of 1990s indie rock. I know her better for her work on Portlandia, which I found inconsistent, but at its best, very funny. Brownstein is an excellent writer. This book is part memoir, part an exploration of the musicmaking process, revealing that good critical response, record sales, and regular touring do not necessarily translate into $$.

It starts with an endearing self-portrait of a hyper-performative young nerd. How could you not fall for a kid who, while running for vice president of her elementary school in suburban Washington State, used the slogan “We built this city on rock ’n’ roll, but we should build this school upon leadership.”

— From a review of the book

I'd like to offer some quotes from the book, but I'm trying to be quite unsentimental and ruthless at discarding anything I'm not using, so this book went from a little library to my apartment and back again, and I don't have it handy for excerpts. As memoirs go I give it an A-. Highly recommended.

Hunger makes me a modern girl by Carrie Brownstein

Can you change your personality?

I'm always interested in the big questions, and this certainly qualifies. Writer Olga Khazan is unhappy with her neuroticism and introversion, and tries to find out if she can actually change these things about herself.

Along the way, she takes the requisite improv class, attends anger management class is the only non-court-mandated participant, and tries some of the mindfulness mainstays like meditation and gratitude expression. She also seeks expert advice on the topic and counters some long-standing myths about the formation and suppose it in immutability of personality.

What is personality, anyway, and where does it come from?

Contrary to conventional wisdom about bossy firstborns and peacemaking middles, birth order doesn’t influence personality. Nor do our parents shape us like lumps of clay. If they did, siblings would have similar dispositions, when they often have no more in common than strangers chosen off the street. Our friends do influence us, though, so one way to become more extroverted is to befriend some extroverts. Your life circumstances also have an effect: Getting rich can make you less agreeable, but so can growing up poor with high levels of lead exposure.

Kazan did some pre-and post-testing, and found she had made moderate shifts in different personality measures, though even the testing comes with caveats. I always appreciate when someone who appears a bit of a cynic discovers ways to slightly sand those cynical edges down. I've certainly tried to do so myself.

As she says, “…being slightly different is still being different—the same you but with better armor.”

Read I gave myself three months to change my personality

Why can't we pay attention?

Insomnia is a great excuse to listen to podcasts, instead of just lying still in a state of agitation. Ezra Klein interviews writer Johann Hari about his book Stolen Focus, an exploration of different types of attention. Hari identifies all the usual suspects in stealing our attention, social media, apps, and the electronics-driven mental clutter that plague us all.

The book explores 12 factors that Hari believes are harming our ability to pay attention. And in it, there’s a clear distinction between what I’ve come to think of as the “demand side” and the “supply side” of attention. The demand side is the story we’re more familiar with: Entire economies and technologies are built around capturing, manipulating and directing our attention. But the supply side is just as important: A whole host of social conditions, from the food we eat to the amount we sleep to the chemicals in our air and the money in our bank accounts, determine the reservoirs of attention we have to draw on in the first place.

I have previously read about the concept of willpower depletion, this idea that we have a finite capacity for making decisions or addressing problems that take a certain amount of thought, and that this capacity varies throughout the day, week, month. I think one of the old lines was: if you're up for parole consideration, make sure you are not the judge's last case of the day.

And by the way, despite the topic, this interview is not a downer.

Ezra Klein interviews Johann Hari (NY Times link; podcast available on Stitcher and elsewhere)

I miss you every time, summer

There's nothing I love more than a great mix. Amerigo Gazaway is a prolific DJ, composer, and remixer. I'm a big fan of his Cool Out Corner, a one hour mix of R&B, hip-hop and dance music spanning decades. He also manages to throw in some bits of "Fly like an eagle” from the Steve Miller Band. Most of it is beat-matched, and he does some clever overlays of different vocal parts and rhythms. I've been listening to this for years, and it hasn't gotten old. It has also introduced me to some classic R&B I'd never heard, so now when I hear the original song I think, “hey, I know that vocal line…”

Closing quote

“Superman has nowhere to change.”

— Shoe store owner, referring to technological change and the disappearance of phone booths

“Superman changes in The Cloud.”

— David’s response