Some thoughts about ISIS and war

Hey. Okay. If you want to get angrier, read this: 7 Reasons America Is Stuck in Never-Ending War. It's on Mother Jones, so those of you who prefer Fox News can brush it off as some wacko liberal, I suppose. If you're still here, here are some facts I would like to pull out of it:
1. we are apparently always at war.
2. war's really horrifying but you and I never even experience it, except in movies, so we can sort of tolerate it.
3. "Support Our Troops" is a really clever move by hawks. I won't argue that each individual soldier is a bad person; they're probably great. I mean, the soldiers I know are totally solid dudes. (I don't know any female soldiers.) So if I condemn war, I have to pull this awkward dodge like "yeah but I support our troops." It's like the part-for-the-whole fallacy or something; if I say "I oppose this war", then the response is "ok, so which soldier is the bad one?" Maybe none of them! The system can lead to unfortunate outcomes even if every part is doing the right thing. (the software engineers among you will agree on how true this is."
4. privatization of war (like privatization of prisons) really messes up incentives. Now we have a bunch of people who are going to actively campaign for more war, because it makes them more money.

Fox News readers, you can tune back in now! This feels at least relatively non-partisan to me:
A Thrive/Survive Theory of the Political Spectrum
So if you agree with this, then the conservative/hawk POV is that "we are really on the edge of extinction and we gotta fight back hard." Zombie apocalypse. The liberal/dove POV is "everything is wonderful, no problems." Utopia. Neither is true, but if you take the hawk POV, war seems to make a lot more sense.

Anyway, read this: What ISIS Really Wants
Super interesting! ISIS is not like "the next Al-Qaeda"; ISIS is a full on cult. This makes it appealing to some (giving people a purpose really draws them in) but

The conclusion I draw from these articles is this: ISIS is a terrible cult, but like most cults, they'll eventually self-destruct. (Also, if we were to attack them now, we could really make things worse.) So can we try chilling out the warring a little bit?

How To Buy A Bike If You Don't Usually Buy Bikes

Been thinking about this and figured it'd be worth writing up. In this guide I assume:
- you want to buy a bike to get around town, a couple miles at a time, nothing big
- you maybe don't have a bike now, or just have something now that you don't really like for whatever reason
- you don't know from bikes
- you're not currently interested in learning how to repair stuff
- maybe you're a little intimidated by bike shops, maybe not

1. Look at your budget. This may fall into ~4 categories:
- nothing or like $50: find your local build-a-bike workshop (Free Ride in Pittsburgh, Bike Kitchen in SF maybe) and learn to put a bike together or repair one. It'll likely be kind of a junker, but you'll learn a lot and it might be fun. Or else scour craigslist, buy whatever you can get, ride it, pitch it when it falls apart. (this is obviously not ideal, but maybe this is where you are. you can still ride a bike! don't listen to judgey assholes.)

- $200 or $300: you can get something decent and used. Scour Craigslist for a bike that even kind of fits you. A hybrid or commuter bike is ideal, as it will be both sorta-fast and sorta-comfortable, but you can't be too picky. Or, if you have a shop nearby that sells used bikes, check it out. Thick Bikes in Pittsburgh is good I hear. Or Bicycle Heaven. Do not buy a bike from Walmart or Target or Dick's; every part on those is terrible and it will probably fall apart faster than a used bike.

Above this range, look at the money you have available, and then subtract at least $150 because you need to buy extras (explained more later).

- $500: this is when it starts getting good, as you're in the new-bike range. Go to a local bike shop (again, not Walmart or Target or Dick's; REI is ok but an actual local bike shop is better, I'll explain why). Check the few shops near you, and ideally look for somewhere that specializes in people like you, that is, people who just want to ride around town (Iron City Bikes is my favorite here, or Pedal Revolution or Valencia Cycles in SF). If it's full of super-fancy pro bikes, that's not awesome, but may still work (Top Gear is my example here. But they're friendly and I like them too; they're just a little higher-end). If the people are friendly, that's good too. Ask them for a hybrid bike. Buy the cheapest one that you like.

- $1000: now you can consider fancier stuff. Same strategy as the $500 tier but you can just consider more bikes. Up until the $1000 level, whatever upgrades you pay for are probably worth it.

- above that: don't spend that much on your first bike. Buy a $400 hybrid or an $800 cross, make sure it's worth it to you, and then upgrade from there.

2. What kind of bike? I present to you, the Dan Tasse Bike Scale:

(click for bigger)

Probably a "fitness hybrid" (middle of this scale). Not super heavy, but not uncomfortable. Good range of gears for going up and down hill. Pretty cheap. For the second bike, you can decide if you want something lighter (then go up to a #1 or #2) or cushier (go to a #4 or #5) but start with a #3, Fitness Hybrid. Some examples are Trek 7.2, Specialized Sirrus, Norco Indie 4, Kona Dew; other good brands include Cannondale, Giant, Jamis... basically, whatever your bike store has is probably good. (incidentally, here's a good article about buying hybrid bikes.)

If you're a little more fit or want something that you can occasionally take for long rides, go up to a cyclocross or touring bike. (this will also cost a few hundred extra dollars, but you'll get better stuff; there's just not much available for $400-500 in cross bikes.) If you are a little unsure about biking, don't have to carry your bike up stairs, and live in a flat place, you might try a comfort hybrid. Or a "city" or "Dutch" bike - the kind you'd see in Amsterdam or Copenhagen. These are more comfortable, you sit upright almost like a chair. Downside is that they're heavy, which sucks if you need to carry them ever or go uphill a lot. Plus, the "comfort hybrids" are ugly. (city/dutch bikes, OTOH, tend to look cool.)

Get one that fits you. Try it out. Ask the bike shop worker if it fits you. Trust them.

3. This is a good time to talk about dealing with your local bike shop.

Why even buy from them? Why not just get a cheap one at walmart or online? A few reasons, and that article I linked to above deals with them well.

- You want to make sure your bike is good quality (walmart's will not be)

- You want to be sure it's safe every time you leave the place (and if you assemble it yourself for the first time, it likely will not be)

- You'll need repairs and maintenance every few months, so it's good to start building a relationship.

And because there are people recommending stuff you don't know much about, there are two ways you can go about this: always trusting them, or never trusting them. The one you should pick is "always trust them." Bike repair is not a lucrative career; they're not in it for the money. 99% of them (at a local bike shop) are in it because they like bikes. They are not trying to screw you. If they recommend something, it's probably worth it.

4. Buy extra stuff too.

Necessities:

- standing pump ($40-60)

- helmet ($40-60) - the cheapest one is fine; make sure it fits

- chain lube ($10) - just ask

- front (white) and rear (red) lights (probably $30 total; get the cheapest set that uses AA or AAA batteries because they're easier to replace. don't splurge, because someone will steal them.)

- lock: $30-60 - just make sure it's a U-lock. Cable locks are easier to cut. If your bike is $500, you probably don't need to go real heavy duty (esp if you don't live in NY or SF) but it's up to you. I find it convenient to store this in the lock bracket that comes with the lock; if you ask the bike shop folks, they'll probably attach this for free, it's pretty simple.

Really really recommended:

- fenders + installation ($40?) this is only not necessary if you only ride when it's dry, or live in a very dry place. They are so worth it, both for your clothes and for the bike's maintenance (grime spraying all over your bike is not great). Let the bike shop folks install them; they're a pain.

5. Maintain it.

Pump it up about once a week.

Lube the chain about once every couple weeks. (ask the bike shop worker if you are not sure how.)

When you feel the brakes getting less powerful, and you've already tweaked the barrel adjusters by your brake levers, or approx every 4 months of constant riding, bring it in to the bike shop for a brake pad replacement (probably $30). And then ask them too if anything else looks like it's worth fixing; wheel truing is common (esp if you hit a lot of potholes) but probably just do whatever else they recommend too.

Stop tying people's self-worth to achievement, particularly intellectual

Okay, goddamn, the thing that I was trying to say before in point 9 two posts ago is way better described by Scott Alexander here. (albeit in many more words)

He must be a really exceptionally hardworking writer. :P

Pokemon Watch

File this under "fun class/side projects." A watch that shows one Pokemon per minute instead of a numerical minute. (no hour hand.)

Memory Palaces are a great way to remember a list of things. Take the rooms in your house, associate each one with an item, and then “walk through” your house to remember all the items. But I only have ~5 rooms, and that’s being generous – what if I want to remember, say, 60 things? It’d be great to have a go-to list of 60 things that I could just pull up whenever and use them as loci for whatever list.

Enter Pokemon. These little critters (there are over 750 now) are unique, distinctive, named, and numbered. Learning the first 60 would give me a pretty universal memory-palace list. Furthermore, they’re chunked into groups of 2-3 (Bulbasaur evolves into Ivysaur evolves into Venusaur), and I still remember some characteristics of them from the Pokemon video game when I was a kid, making for even easier learning. And they’re cute.

Screenshots:
2:17pm, or 2:Pidgeotto, if you will.
2:19 is now 2:Rattata.

More info on some hacking around to fit 60 144x144 images in the watch here. Code’s here. Images are from http://www.marriland.com, for example http://www.marriland.com/forums/updates-and-announcements/featured-weekly-poll/444268-poll-6-which-is-your-favorite-kanto-starter. Code includes uPNG port from Matthew Hungerford:https://github.com/mhungerford/png_demo, which is itself derived from LodePNG version 20100808, by Lode Vandevenne and Sean Middleditch.

links dump

I know nobody else reads posts like these but I kind of want to save them/mentally catalogue all these links I've been saving:

History

1. The Forgotten History of How Automakers Invented "Jaywalking" - this is fascinating, surprising, and frustrating.

Current Things

2. Ok, first things first, Vote More on net neutrality. (by "vote more" I mean "yeah you can only vote once, but email your congressperson to make your voice heard more, and call them for even more.")

3. Also about cities: the world's not urbanizing, it's suburbanizing. This is the sort of thing that galvanizes me towards some kind of life mission: use BIG DATA to make these emerging megacities more like cities, less like megasuburbs (with all their flaws), and just generally overall not terrible.

4. On Charlie Hebdo: the murders were an atrocity; as the magazine does satire, it walks the line of good taste and occasionally crosses over, but was not a racist piece of trash and we should not jump on it as one; we should be allowed to draw pictures of Mohammed, we should avoid doing so because we're nice people but if we do it should not cause a bigger stink than if someone graffitis "Jesus sucks" or "the Dharma is a bunch of poo" on the side of a 7-11; most terrorists are not Muslims, but the ones who are doing so are really strategic and doing a good job of "sharpening the contradictions", and as a result the French should do what the Norwegians did after Breivik: nothing. Mourn the dead and don't overreact. (don't remember the name Breivik? He was that guy who shot ~80 kids on an island a couple years ago. that's right, not a celebrity.)

5. I support voluntary euthanasia/assisted suicide. (what's the best term for this?) Slate Star Codex is a rare blog that I stumbled on that is not particularly about anything, but I think it's really smart, wise, and worth reading it anyway. Here's his article about voluntary euthanasia/assisted suicide.

6. Where should we spend money to Help The World The Most? I always point to Givewell, and yeah, their approach seems pretty good. Another answer I'd accept: fix the US government. One way we can help fix the government is to fix the lobbying system. The wiseguys at Cards Against Humanity sent a bunch of money to try to do that. (and some jokes at politicians' expense; for the record, these clowns are 11/14 Republican, and I hate that we have to pick Republican or Democrat only but stuff like this is why Democrats are usually the lesser of two evils. okay okay some of these are just one-liners of dumb things they said, but some are indicative of deeper issues.)

7. Taxes: wait, we might actually raise taxes on the 1%? This sounds like a great idea. Also, Elizabeth Warren running for president does too.

8. A metapoint about all current events is offered by this great Cowbirds in Love comic. News (including internet news, maybe especially internet) throws us through this tumbler (NPI) of ignorance-rage-ignorance again.

Personal Life

9. Doing a startup, even if it's the successful "work 80 hour weeks but get rich in 5 years" kind, might leave you kind of emotionally and developmentally stunted. Similarly, grad school. So doing grad school as the not-80-hour-weeks way feels like the least likely to make me Einstein/Larry-and-Sergey but more likely to have a better life.

But here's the thing! It's not like I can choose work 80 hours and be Einstein or work 40 hours and be a boring but happy guy. Being Einstein probably happens if you find your niche, enjoy it, get awesome at it, and get lucky too. So don't worry that you're "choosing not to be Einstein." Do you, and hope for the best. At least that's the life philosophy I'm following now.

We need a word for this: taxes on "not worrying about it"

Cleveland installed red light/speed cameras. You speed, or you go through a red light a fraction of a second too late, and it takes a picture of your license plate and mails you a ticket. Ugh. (they then voted them down or something, cool, whatever.)

One friend, half-jokingly, said he supported red-light cameras because he knows where they all are and can avoid them. In effect, the city put in a tax on drivers that you can avoid (and therefore benefit from) if you do extra mental work to study the traffic maps.

This should have a name. Similar things:

- Ryanair. If you fly with them, you have to check a special box *not* to buy BS insurance, you have to carry on your bag (or maybe check it or whatever, depending on the day), you have to print your boarding pass ahead of time or pay $40, etc etc.

- Mail-in rebates. A bottle of wine is $15, or $10 after rebate, so they can advertise $10 but still make $15 because most people won't fill in the rebate.

- Credit card juggling for miles. (not carrying a balance, I mean signing up for cards to get the 40k miles bonus and then ditching the card.) I make a few hundred bucks worth a year doing this, but it does mean I have to monitor a few cards so I don't end up paying a bunch of annual fees.

If you have lots of free time and/or are good at organizing, you can easily do all of this. If not, you are taxed. This needs a name. "Simplicity Tax"?

(it probably goes without saying that I think most of these are monstrosities.)

Been getting a little grumpy on the internet

Grumpy in general, I guess, due in part to the internet.

You know how Fox News and CNN are our parents' generation's hate machine? They show bad news 24/7 and get you mad at who you should be mad at. I think Facebook and Twitter are that for our generation. Yeah, there's the occasional conversation, but when you look at people talking about things in the world, a lot of it is echo chamber or "someone did something bad once."

Maybe it's a result of quality of attention. You're not going to pay good attention to Facebook; you're going to give it half-focused strung-out attention. Maybe I need to be doing less of that in general. (see, for example, the fact that I never blog anymore; feels like I have fewer deep thoughts.)

Oh, and Merry Christmas, y'all.

Saying "Let's keep this a calm and logical argument" is itself part of the argument.

"An open letter to privileged people who play devil's advocate". If you see that this is on a site called "feministing.com" and immediately close it, then, unfortunately, you are one of the people that this is written for. Not sure how to fix this here, but it's a good article, please read it? :-/

This is particularly salient after the Mike Brown and Eric Garner cases. Some people's reaction to this might be something along these lines:
"A cop killed an innocent black guy. That doesn't happen in the world that I know. A bunch of people are angry about it. That's kind of unfortunate and annoying - I have enough problems in my life without having to confront some new police racism thing - and now they're rioting too? argh. Anyway, I kind of have to dismiss this, because I don't have time to actually process it, and I can't really believe it's real. But people are angry about it, so I've got to couch it in a well-thought-out logical argument. Let's see, I can pick out particular of Mike Brown's case where it's ambivalent whether he might have attacked Darren Wilson or something. Garner... uh, yeah, that was bad, but just an isolated bad cop."

On the other hand, some people's reaction to Brown and Garner might be something like "Raaaaaaaaaaarrgghh!"

In our society, the super-logical argument is privileged. The "raaargh" argument is dismissed as "emotional", "simple", etc. But sometimes we need the "raaargh" response. If you're arguing something "just because you want to get to the bottom of it", or you find yourself trying to pick holes in stories that a lot of your friends are arguing and you're not even sure why you're doing it anymore, maybe stop it. In being calm and logical, you are already adding a voice to the argument, and it's usually the voice of things not changing.

(appropriate analogy: think about why we shouldn't "teach the controversy" about evolution/god in science classes. "but what if--" no. this does not deserve kids' time.)

We need a word for this:

Implementing a general rule that causes a lot of bad edge cases.

For example: in India, there's a rule that you can't leave and come back into the country within two months on a tourist visa. This is ostensibly to prevent terrorism, but it sometimes causes a lot of annoyance for regular tourists like me. (they've since amended it to exclude tourism to neighboring countries; whatever.)

In programming, we'd call it a bug. Then we'd fix the code so it is more complicated but hopefully works fine. At any rate, the more the world gets bigger and more global, the more general rules we get, which means the exceptions get more common, which leads to either super-complicated rules (the IRS approach) or lots of people getting screwed (or both).

It's a common thing. I think we could talk about it better if there were a word for it. (or is there one that I just can't think of?)

Vitamin B12 has made my canker sores better

Check this the hell out. Internet browsing plus real data making a positive change in my life. tl;dr: I used to get canker sores a lot, then I started taking B12 daily, and now they are much less bad.

Long version: since I've been a kid, I got canker sores in my mouth pretty often. They are painful. One day last year I started tracking them. Then one day this year I was browsing the internet and saw this great infographic about supplements. I noticed there's a study about vitamin B12 helping canker sores. So I bought some B12 and kept tracking.

Every day I recorded how bad my sores were, from 0 (no sores) to 10 (terrible). Here's a graph:

Darker red = worse. Also, if it's light gray, that means I recorded data and I had no sores; if it's white, I didn't record data. Got lazy a bit. Y'know. The day I started taking B12 was June 14 2014, so in the bottom row, about midway through.

Then I compared average badness per day. In 2013 it was 1.8. In early 2014 (pre-B12) it was 3.4. After I started B12, it was 0.9. T-tested pre-B12 vs post-B12, and it was y'know significant P < .0000 etc but that's kind of BS because for so many reasons I can't use a T-test here (data's not normal).

Also, there are many data sins of different magnitudes here: collecting data on arbitrary periods each year (both starting with a sore), ignoring seasonality, using colors that we probably don't perceive linearly, scoring differently at the ends (e.g. 2 means I have a tender spot but no sore, so I really don't mind) etc.

But! There's theoretical backing too: I asked my dentist if B12 should help canker sores. He said, oh yeah, whole B complex is great for that kind of thing. Well dang, why didn't anyone tell me? But anyway, now I know, and now you know too. At least for me, seems to be working.

Thing about Ferguson I copied from Facebook

Ok I guess I talk about much more trivial things all the time, and it's enough of an issue that I better say a thing on Ferguson, so the few who are not in my echo chamber (older relatives?) might get a taste of what their 28yo white male privileged Facebook Friend thinks.

The one thing we as a nation, and particularly the sub-nation of white privileged people, have to learn here from Ferguson is that racism is alive and well here in America.

But bear with me! The word "racist" (and "racism") have become so toxic that you might have even written me off as an "angry liberal" even when I just said the word "racism". Please don't. I'm not trying to say that there are *bad people* being *purely evil*. It's just that we're dealing with a lot of broken systems, and the first step to fixing any problem is to acknowledge that it exists.

Here are some ways it is working:
- white cop shoots unarmed black teenager, gets not even indicted.
- said white cop gets $400k+ in "legal fund" donations - for what? he's not even on trial. Google "darren wilson fund".
- media coverage of teenager focuses on how he maybe smoked weed sometimes and might have stolen cigars, not the fact that he is an innocent human being whose life matters. Google "he was no angel".
- media coverage of aftermath focuses on "rioting" and "looting", while ignoring 3 things: 1. white "riots" are just as often called "celebrations", 2. looting is not the same as murder, 3. the over-the-top terrifying police-military response.
- you might not be able to imagine anything from their perspective. Google "why it's so hard for whites to understand ferguson."
- some people get caught up in the particulars of the case. Particulars of this case don't change the systemic issue. Getting caught up in the particulars is like saying "well, but look at that one game the Cavs won last year, see, they didn't need Lebron."
- there may be more but I should get back to work. Uh, I guess it may be good to google "respectability politics."

edit: ok, so anyway, those who would quibble over particulars of the Mike Brown case, now there's Eric Garner, so point is, institutional racism exists.

On caring

Interesting way to think about solving the world's problems.

In short:
Do you think it's worth it to give $3 to clean oil off a bird and save its life?
If so, then it follows that it'd be worth it to give $2.4 million if you could save the lives of 800,000 birds. (if not, why not?) Wait, but that's more money than I'll make in my entire life -- what about my house, my kids, etc.

So you (or at least I) really don't think it's worth $3 to save a bird. The reason is that there are way too many other problems in the way. Yeah, if I brought an oily bird to you, I could trigger some mental circuit that's a remnant from caveman days where you care about cute little animals, but our world is so big that if you cared that much about everything, you'd go nuts. There are a million huge problems and you can't solve them all.

The way I take it from here is: well, best to make the largest total contribution I can. Better to spend 30 years being a -1, then be a +1000 for a year. Don't worry about all the little birds along the way.

(which is convenient, as it's what I was realistically going to do anyway. Well.)

"You won't die wishing you'd worked more"

Reading down facebook, clicking on every god damn thing because I'm tired, ended up reading http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/charlotte-kitley/bowel-cancer-charlotte-kitley_b_5836238.html
(warning: might make you sad, either because it's actually sad, or because some lady's dying words have been turned into Huffington Post clickbait)

Here's the thing: I'm working more than I used to. You won't die wishing you worked more for more money or power or glory. You might die wishing you worked more so you could get to that job you actually enjoy, instead of taking the easy road and working a boring-but-9-to-5 job your whole life.

Everyone says it's all about who is in your life, the family, and friends, and yes, it is. (I have to say that, or you'll think I'm a sociopath, but it's true.) But it's also all about what is in your life; the things you do, work and otherwise. Assuming we don't go sit on clouds or burn in fires after we die, the point of our life is to make the most of life here on earth, and if you spend it all doing something you don't love, or at least like, you'll have a lot of blah time in there. It's multiplicative: happiness = who * what. Which is why everyone says "it's all about the people"; if the "who" goes to zero, you're left with nothing. But if the "what" goes to zero, you're also left with nothing - a bunch of great connections and a slog filing TPS reports all day. (okay, it's not so bad, because you have the life outside work, but it's still a big loss.)

Well, look. I agree with the sentiment: don't work like crazy for external goals. (come on, you know me.) I just get tired of the phrase "you won't die wishing you'd worked more", because it's saccharine and because it paints with too broad a stroke. (kind of like "we should use our smartphones less." or "the government is too big.")

Why don't they build bridges like that anymore?

My parents and I were marveling at the pretty Pittsburgh bridges, and expressing our disappointment that the new Innerbelt bridge in Cleveland is so ugly and utilitarian. My dad, I think, wondered "why don't they build bridges like that anymore?" and his subtly veiled answer was "There's not enough competition. Nobody cares anymore. And the government is controlled by a bunch of corrupt cronies."

My subtly veiled answer was "There's too much capitalism. We don't value enough besides money and efficiency. Someone else undercuts the beautiful bid with something cheap but crummy, and in a desire to save a buck, they go for the cheap one."

Huh. Both could pretty well explain this particular case. I guess this is the danger of building in simple, vague demons into your world view.

I do think, if we as a society want pretty buildings, we should prioritize that and build it into our plans for bridges etc. Which means they'll cost more, and we have to be okay with that. Which means we should pay more taxes, and we have to be okay with that.
Or, maybe we're not collectively okay with paying more taxes because so many people are struggling to get by. In which case, we should admit that the US is lagging far behind some other countries, mostly in Europe, and see what they're doing right that we're not.

Of course, I just introduced a few more simple, vague demons! Maybe I'll go back to making burritos.

I love fall. It is when things start.

Which is weird, right? For most of civilized history, spring is when things start, and fall is when things end. But for most of my life, and really most other students, everything starts in the fall. Pittsburgh is wonderful in the fall - and summer too, but definitely fall.

I'm writing a paper. I'm not sure it's fully nonsense. I'm teaching a class, and I'm not sure that I'm fully incompetent at it. (I'm not sure in the other direction in either case.) Summer was a trip.

The next year should bring a bunch of things. Might be a good one. My friend Ram once declared a year the "year of Ram", and I'm feeling sort of guardedly optimistic about this being the "year of Dan". Or, I mean, maybe not THE year, but a lot of planets and zodiac things must be lining up. I'm feeling mostly pretty good about it all. Occasionally even feeling creative again, which is kind of neat.

Still got too much work to do, still tired, still wishing I were a couple steps closer to understanding the oneness of all things, still terrible at my job, whatever, but maybe I've got a chance, which is sort of a step in the right direction.

Plus, season's turned. Time for some new (or old) music recs.

Avoid finite games; robots taking your jobs; gentrification

Avoid Finite Games
Daniel Lemire is a blogger who's vaguely related to computer things and I'm not sure why I still read him, but occasionally he comes up with posts like this: A Culture of Envy. His basic point: stop playing finite games (games where someone else has to lose for you to win), and play more infinite games (games where everyone can win).

Over the last say 7 years, this has, without me even knowing it, become kind of a guiding principle of my life.

Simply and obviously: I like games like Pandemic, Betrayal at the house on the hill, Dominion, Ticket to Ride, over games like Settlers or Risk. In Pandemic and Betrayal, most obviously, you're all on one team. (mostly.) Dominion and Ticket to Ride are basically solitaire - you're building up your thing, other people are building theirs, and eventually someone wins but it doesn't really matter. Also chess and Magic, because it feels more like you're figuring out something elegant together instead of competing against each other.
(and word games, because they feel more like sports; whatever.)

Also obviously: I don't like striving for money or, to an extent, fame. And it's not a moral thing; it's just less fun to win something that forces other people to be losing.

Robots Taking Your Jobs
Humans Need Not Apply- Robots are coming for your jobs - all of them - and unemployment might be high forever. Huh! Well, that could be good. (some jobs are super mechanized and dehumanizing; remember the data points in your system are humans, remember they are humans, remember they are humans, etc) Permanent unemployment could be fine - if our basic standard of unemployed life were high enough. Imagine if we had a guaranteed minimum income, and you could get the equivalent of, I dunno, $25k (and health coverage) without working. We talk about empowering artists and stuff - what if you really could?
A friend who was in India for a while: You see super-dire poverty in Calcutta, and we mostly don't have that kind of poverty here. We've decided as a society that the minimum bar is somewhat above that. But the minimum bar is still pretty low here! You can be stuck without the possibility of sleep! God, what kind of a hazy half-existence would permanent sleep deprivation be!
A friend who just got back from Germany: It's depressing, because the infrastructure and standard of living are so much higher there. We could have that! We have enough money! But we choose not to, because "people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps" or something.

Gentrification:
- just sort of interesting: poor neighborhoods with >40% black people don't gentrify
- but, I mean, maybe gentrification is good overall?
- but read that closer: it's good for homeowners. Well, sure. I'm not real worried about the net worths of homeowners.
- but seriously, it's good for people. I guess they're saying, "it would be good if San Francisco had built more housing." No wait, overall, it's good; rich yuppie invaders don't drive out long-time residents. Huh. But on the ground, people are getting evicted. Aren't they? (or is it a sacrifice for a disproportionately small number of people to make a neighborhood that's better for everyone else, including the majority of poorer folks who stay?)

Dang, so long, San Francisco!

I'm gone already. How did that happen?

Props:
- my friends who live there. It feels like (surprise) a city of transplants, but the nice thing is, I'm a transplant, and I know a lot of those transplants. It was great reconnecting with some old friends, and staying connected with others.
- my roommates at Vegetable House. (I've named it that to distinguish from Pretzel House, where I live in Pittsburgh.) I still like having roommates. It's a good way to make deep connections when you're all transplants at some level or another.
- okay okay the coffee, look, it's absurd how good the coffee scene is there. There are at least 4 world-class roasters, so I get to decide that I dig Ritual and Four Barrel a little more than Blue Bottle and Sightglass. Also I've got my little rolodex of small roasters, and I can decide I don't like a coffee shop for no reason other than that it's not awesome enough. Short list includes Haus, Linea, Philz, Sextant, Papa November, Saint Frank, Matching Half, Workshop, Coffee Bar, Grand, and Wrecking Ball, but that's only the top tier. Honestly, I've got to make a map of these.
- and burritos, it must be said, I will put a Taqueria Cancun up against anyone but really anywhere you go it's quite nice.
- bikes, yes, a lot of people bike and it's pretty easy to get around, and more than that, it's a lot of fun and very pretty.
- nearby mountains and forests and other pretty places
- Caltrain. Not as nice as sitting at home or even in the office for those 45 min each way, but surprisingly not terrible. The ability to put a bike on it makes it all possible.
- occasional... things? that happen? that are just generally interesting? hat tips to the Long Now talks, Maker Faire, MacroCity, and a handful of other things that I couldn't even go to. It's the center of some world. I appreciate that.
- Scoot. Zipcar for electric scooters. So good.
- the ability for Tati and I to both get internships out there. I mean, I put it down here at the bottom, but I want to make sure I don't take for granted how wonderful it was that we were together out there.

Slops:
- feeling bad about being a gentrifier all the time. Okay, so one solution is to just stop feeling bad. But then you're just ignoring a problem. (also, it's hard when there are flyers all around your neighborhood that say "EVICTED" with a picture of a Google bus. Or, you know, when this graffiti shows up literally on my house. arguably this is a good thing; better to confront our problems than ignore them. but it does put me in an uncomfortable spot.)
- um, commuting so long does get old. (gotta get a job with some Google buses! ... ideally without evicting anyone.)
- working three jobs is hard. (internship, preparing for teaching a class, and keeping up with my main line of research in a little way.)
- uh, it's crowded? I started looking for bars or parks or just places that had no other real qualifications besides being quiet. I mean, I don't like wanting the same things that a lot of other people want, and there, there are definitely a lot of people that want a lot of things. Some friends and I made a reservation for brunch a month in advance! A month!
- and, you know, the rent is too damn high, etc, see #1

but overall it was a super rocking summer. Hope to be back soon. Yes. Thank you San Francisco, it's been (ahem) hella sweet.

The Consumer Blues

Okay, so ideally, you give something back to the world, right? You consume resources and stuff, but hopefully you do things that are so nice that it makes up for all that. So like your net impact on the world is -1 because you ate food and created greenhouse gases, but it's +10 because you also invented a cure for some disease, or you made truck tires 8% more efficient, or something, so in the end you're +9.

It's a long time of being a -1 before you start being a +10. I mean, I'm certainly not there yet. And indeed, a long time of being a -2 or -3. (living the high tech life with all my airplane tickets and fancy coffees and computers and almonds is not exactly the most low-impact kind of thing.)

I'm operating on the assumption that it's best to go -3 for a long time and then be +100. Like, if new shoes or a new computer would make my life go a little smoother, go for it; optimize my life in order to make myself a better human, not worry so much about the cost, and know that all these improvements will make me eventually a powerful producing force of good. (the alternative is to be kind of ascetic: live in a tent and be No Impact Man, reduce my negatives to -0.25. But if that hurts my ability to do good in the future, making me a +40 instead of +100, that's not so good.)

However, it is hard to feel like you're a -3 for your first 30 years and just sort of go on faith that eventually you'll make up for it.

San Francisco!

Every day: ride my sweet new shiny impractical single-speed bike to a train that I can put my bike on, thus making a long commute doable.*

Tuesday: saw a film about coffee, called A Film About Coffee, playing at the beautiful old Castro Theater. Ran into a couple friends from CMU. Found out they're coffee geeks too.

Yesterday: ran into my friend Jared on the train coming home. Talked crowdfunding.** Enjoyed a beer (brewed at 21st Amendment, San Francisco). Rode my impractical single-speed bike up to Bernal Heights Park to catch the sunset (or, more appropriately, the fog-roll-in) over the city. Picked up new beans at one of my favorite roasters in the world, Ritual. Saw a creme brulee shop***. Of course I stopped in to the creme brulee shop. Practiced meditation with tips from a new meditation teacher, who I had read a lot online, and then just ran into at Maker Faire a few weeks ago.

Today: free Stumptown cold brew coffee from someone promoting their whatever delivery service. As I got on the aforementioned awesome train. Later heading to an EFF event and a local mashup DJ's show.

Tomorrow: Tati's arriving here for the summer! She'll be in Sunnyvale, which is not super close, but getting around is totally doable, thanks to bike, Zipcar, and that wonderful train.

* the pessimist could say that, in another city, I might not have to commute 40 miles. Fair enough. Not saying jobs in valley + Caltrain makes the city better than just having jobs in SF. But given that I happen to have a job in the valley this summer, the train makes a reasonable life possible.

** crowdfunding is one silicon valley buzzword that I don't think is just a buzzword. I like the world that it enables.

*** you know, because that's a thing.

Man! I am laughing about what a stereotype I am, but I am also just laughing because I so enjoy all of this!

Bikes don't get numbers if I just buy them off the shelf.

They do get names, though. My latest addition: Jeppe Laursen.

Q&A:
Q: What is it?
A: An SE Draft Lite single speed urban bike.
Q: What's special about it?
A: Basically, it's fun. It's sleek and pretty lightweight, it has only one speed, it still has flat bars so I can handle the hills, but it feels pretty snappy on flat ground overall. Hard to explain why it's fun to ride, but you know how running on sand is really difficult? It's the opposite of that. Plus, not that I'll own it long enough to do maintenance, but maintenance is pretty easy.
Q: Don't you already have a bike?
A: Sure, I've got four.
Q: But, don't you already have a bike in San Francisco?
A: Yes, but-
Q: isn't this inferior in pretty much every way to the bike you already have?
A: Well, yes. It's lowish-grade steel (my other bike's aluminum), and, well, it has no gears. But it's more than good enough. And at $320, I can't ask for too much. Plus, I can sell both of these bikes, so it's maybe not as silly as it seems.
Q: Who's Jeppe Laursen?
A: Senior from Junior Senior, of Move Your Feet fame. (stop right now and listen to that song.) Also, he later recorded this. So, you know, he is about as goofy and impractical, and fun for the summer, as this bike.