Househusbands

The title of this article is clickbait but it's a pretty good argument for househusbands.

(note: the article talks about "housewives." I'm instead saying "househusbands" because:

- makes you think for a second, I guess

- makes me sound not totally backwards and reactionary when I talk about this

- also avoids the common-knowledge problem with "housewives": the author knows she's not totally backwards and reactionary. I know the author's not totally backwards and reactionary. The author knows that I know she's not totally backwards and reactionary. I know that the author knows that I know etc etc. But each of these steps we have to make sure we're clear on; if we just avoid the term, we can stop doing all this work.

- uh and maybe if we use the term "housewives" we're more likely to slip back into backwards and reactionary modes of thinking accidentally

- "househusbands" works as well as "housewives"

- but like I'm not gonna fight you if you say "housewives", whatever, gosh; so long as you don't accidentally or purposefully slip into backwards and reactionary modes of thinking)

Premise: Life today is pretty mentally taxing. Maybe if you're a married couple, one of you staying home might help you manage the stupid taxingness of modern life.

Point 1: Life today is very mentally taxing.

There seem to be uncatalogably infinite challenges. Some recent ones include "how do I manage these stock options" (cry me a river, I know, but they can actually create more hardship than they're worth if you're not careful and very unlucky), "I gotta fill out this form for my therapist", "we have to get someone to watch our cat", "I have to pester my landlord to fix our washing machine", "I have to pester my landlord to get someone to check on my old neighbor so he doesn't get bedbugs again", "I have to figure out how to get my bike to a shop so they can fix a flat tire", etc etc.

Meanwhile I would like to do some things like cook food and see my friends sometimes. This might be more practical than it seems; if I don't do those things then I am less able, not more, to manage all the dumb stock options and stuff.

And this is before kids!

Counterpoint: "Dan, just simplify"

Counter-counterpoint: I agree that many of these are brought on by life-as-career-tech-person-in-SF, and that kind of life is not very simple. However, it seems to be the simplest life that at-least-somewhat fulfills me right now. Other options include independent working (oof!), startupping (double oof!) and academicizing (nevermind!). None of these are simpler. My backup coffeeshop plan sounds nice, but I'd actually probably be bad at that, and once I jump off the tech-career track it'd be hard to get back on. (And being poor in the US suuucks, so I am trying to Make That Money now in order to prevent that happening.)

Point 2: you kiiinda might need a full-time (or at least part-time) house manager, or else you'll both be exhausted all the time.

I guess this doesn't need much explanation, but I do find Tati and me both working Monday-Friday, then doing *tasks* all Sunday, leaving much less time to refill and be myself than I'd like.

Where does this leave us? I guess in the future, especially post kids, it'd be really nice to trade off the full time career life. It'd be good to be able to say, I'm gonna work part time for a few years, and also do all the *tasks*, and that will still leave us plenty of time to be humans.

But like I said, that doesn't feel fulfilling now! Argh. Well, hopefully that will change.

Extra rant: If I ask someone to do a thing, why is it still my responsibility to make sure they don't just forget it forever? Argh! I don't expect everyone to do everything that I ask, but even simply responding to my email/text with "no" would be so helpful! Ok, whatever, life is stressful.

Low pass filters

"We've gotta keep this traffic flowing and accept a little sin" - Cake

Nerd Rage: when you get mad at something that is Definitely Wrong, but not at all important. I am inspired/annoyed/awed by a guy I used to vaguely know at Google who would send you whole changelists/pull requests that were just him correcting your whitespace, irrelevant punctuation, 80-char lines, and other code style/lint issues. He was right, but I dunno, pretty annoying about the whole thing. Nerd rage comes up more often, but I don't have as good examples of it.
Etymology of this term: I made it up.

See also related terms: Bikeshedding, Yak shaving. (Did you know that was named after a Ren and Stimpy episode?) Bikeshedding and Yak shaving are mostly the same, minus the rage.

Well-Actually: someone says something that is technically true but irrelevant. The worst case of it is when you just want to sound smart. A more forgivable, but still bad, case is when you don't realize that you're adding more information that isn't helpful here because you're not skillful enough to realize that's what you're doing.

Righteous fury: (this doesn't really need definition but I can't break the format now.)

Low pass filter: a filter that lets low frequencies through but cuts off high frequencies.

Nerd raging usually doesn't feel good when you're doing it. Righteous fury, or righteous-fury-filled nerd rage, feels good when you're doing it, but feels bad as soon as it's over. Bikeshedding and yak shaving don't really feel good when you look back on the time you spent doing it. Well-actuallying doesn't feel good when you've developed enough social awareness to realize that you're well-actuallying. Life's easier with a well-tuned mental/emotional low-pass filter.

(I'm not sure if "high pass filter" would have made this work better. I'm thinking, cut out pops and hisses, right? Hmm, sorry, filter doesn't let me care about this :P

So, there we go! Just stop worrying about small stuff, right? Like cars parking in the bike lane, or whether an online game could be 1% better! Of course, this is easier said than done. But as a general principle, I think: if Calm You thinks something is not a big deal, then anything you can do to make Angry You care less about it is probably in the right direction.

(If you want to be like Herodotus said about the ancient Persians, you could sub in "Sober You" for Calm You and "Drunk You" for Angry You.)

Animal Hot Springs and telling the story

Remember Neko Atsume (Cat Collector)?

That game was great! Put out some treats, have adorable kittens come visit, maybe take pictures of them if you want. And that's about it. I think the cats give you fish, and you can spend that on new cat toys.

I recently was linked to a knockoff called Animal Hot Springs. I started playing it, and thought it was great! Animals come in to a hot springs, they ask for stuff like a drink or a towel, you drag it to them, and they give you acorns. You then spend the acorns on new hot springs gear.

This eventually became less fun. Dragging the stuff to the animals was not so fun. Hoarding acorns was not so fun. Sometimes you had the option to watch ads to speed up your progress. (I think Richard Garfield would be displeased.) Most of the ads were for other crummy games, like match-3 clones and Farmville knockoffs.

Why was it less fun? I don't know, I guess it was just less tuned. I felt like I had to grind for a long time. Plus, the basic loop of "drag food to animal" was less fun than the basic loop of "look at kitties." Oh, and the ads.

Anyway, it seems very psychically helpful to tell stories of things that happen to you. (See also: recent bike guy story.) In this case, it's not just "I'm an idiot who played a junky game", it's an opportunity to wax philosophical about what did and didn't work about that game. (And to marvel at how silly it is that I didn't like that but I'm now playing Antimatter Dimensions, aka the most recent Number-go-up game.)

And this blog is one way I do this. In a space that's mostly psychologically safe (somehow, despite being on the internet); that is, where I know that if anyone's listening, they're probably friendly. Thank you for making it so!

On mystery hunt, and doing things you really quite like

I got a chance to join the MIT Mystery Hunt with a friend's team this past weekend. This is one of the biggest puzzle-hunt events, open to anyone and drawing in a crowd of a couple thousand to Boston every January. I was a little worried that I couldn't hack it; looking at a couple puzzles last year, I solved zero of them. I was also worried about the group coordination - I get kinda nervous when I'm trying to solve a thing with other people all at once. (Pair programming, for example, I find pretty challenging.) I was excited because, well, when puzzling is good, it's great.

And this was great! I met a few new friends (the 4 of us who represented the team out here in SF), and mostly sat around in a room puzzling all day. It feels like, I think, if you're a runner and you go for a nice long run, or if you're a real strongman and you go weightlifting. (ok, maybe not quite that good. (audio NSFW.)) Time really melts away, and you're just there trying to think about this weird thing from 12 different angles, until finally you get it, and then you feel like pumping your fist and dancing around like Coach.

I solved, I think, wholly or partially, 6 puzzles. I hesitate to even say this because:
- count of trophies is kinda not the point
- wouldn't really want this to become even a friendly competition
- don't want to dissuade anyone reading this who can't solve even one
But I like to have it out there as a metric to measure myself against, I think. In the same way that runners track their PRs, I can track my progress in terms of Mystery Hunt puzzles solved.

The puzzles, too, were great. Mystery Hunt puzzles seem to be a notch above puzzles in e.g. the Microsoft College Puzzle Challenge. Like, stack 3 MSCPC puzzles together, and you get one Mystery Hunt puzzle. Before I thought I was just too dumb to solve MH puzzles; turns out you just have to stick with them longer.

Coordination turned out to be great. I could mostly grab a puzzle and go into my little world, which I like. Sometimes I'd get stuck on a thing and then I could ask my 3 fellow puzzlers, and we'd brainstorm together for a minute. Sometimes I'd get really stuck and then I'd just abandon the puzzle; with our sweet Google Docs synchronization, someone else could pick it up.

Anyway, I think it's valuable to do things you really like. I'm happy to have found a way to do a new one, and am looking forward to continuing to puzzle more.

In which I meet another David Tennant wannabe, but he's a big jerk.

Previously in the "Dan is mad at bike lane parkers" saga.

I've moved on to Tactic 8: I bought some nametag stickers and wrote on them "I parked in a bike lane", and have stuck them on a couple cars that are in bike lanes. A change to what I proposed before: these stickers are not bumper stickers, they are harmless and easily removed; the goal is to either spark people to think about it (not likely) or to give them 5 seconds of annoyance as a penalty for doing a slightly annoying thing.

On Wednesday, I try Tactic 5a: stopping in front of a parked car, and kind of waving "hey, can you move out of the bike lane?" (this has been somewhat effective, really!) The driver, a ~30 year old white man in an Audi unfortunately with a resemblance to David Tennant more striking than my own, waves "no." I go "come on, please?" He goes "nope!" So I put a sticker on the hood of his car.

Guy gets pissed, jumps out of car, pulls sticker off, and shoves me off my bike onto the ground. (I am unhurt.) We start yelling at each other, crowd gathers, etc. He's maintaining that I put the sticker on his car, he shoved me, so we're even. I think I said "you think so? want to let the cops settle that?" He says sure, call the cops. So I do.

A couple of other cyclists are going "come on, you two, just shake hands and make up, don't waste the cops' time." I coax a gritted-teeth apology out of him: "I'm sorry." "You're sorry for..." "For pushing you." "And for parking in the bike lane." "... uh, for double parking." "No, for parking in the bike lane."
These other bikers are pressuring me to shut up and accept his apology (as well as scolding me for stickering his car in the first place), so I do, and I ask the cops to cancel the call.

Guy and I then talk more, and I think "ah great, we're all calmed down, we might come to some mutual understanding!" Nope. He goes on to explain that it's just traffic, deal with it, dude. I'm saying "yeah, but this makes me swerve around you, which is dangerous, and this is exactly what a bike lane is trying to prevent." He says he doesn't care and is going to keep parking in bike lanes anyway. Eventually he goes "Look, I don't want to be having this conversation anymore. Have a good one." and climbs back in his impervious metal box.

I'm unimpressed with his... basically, his retraction of his apology! When I thought we might be cooling nerves and he might be realizing he's taken it too far... instead, turns out he's just saying what he really thinks now that he knows the cops won't actually show up. I call back the police and ask if there's anything we can do at this point. We did get his license plate, and it's in the incident report, so in fact yes, we can still file charges.

I go into the police office the next day to make a statement. I try to figure out what happens next - turns out it'd probably be that he'd get charged with misdemeanor battery (possible sentence: up to $2k fine and 6 months jail and/or probation), we'd both have to show up in court, and we see what happens. I decide to take the statement home and think about it.

So many thoughts at this point! And this is 3 days later. I think I've let them settle to where I can put them in order. (and post them publicly on the internet? *shrug*)

1. The primary feelings are anger and frustration because I feel somewhat powerless here, and because he "won."
2. What happens if I do file a report?
1. Probably nothing happens - the case gets dismissed somehow.
2. Maybe we both go in front of a judge and the judge says "you two play nice now, ok?" I would feel good that Dude was inconvenienced; I would feel shitty because he "won." He would continue being a terrible person.
3. Maybe the judge would convict him of this, and he would get a fine and/or probation. That'd be great. Maybe it'd be a "oh geez, I'm kind of a jerk" moment, and he'd clean up his act.
4. Maybe the judge convicts him, and he actually goes to jail! Uh, I would feel... kinda bad about this. Like, he's a rich white kid so I think he'd be ok, but... I dunno, this would feel disproportionate. (to be clear, if he was nonwhite, I probably would not have even bothered him in the first place and certainly would not call the cops on him!) However, the chance of this is (I hope!) miniscule.
5. Maaaybe I get hit with some fault of my own for putting a sticker on his car! I mean, who knows. He'd probably try to make a case that I was "menacing" him or something because I made physical contact with his precious Audi.
6. In any of these cases, I have to deal with it longer, and that exacts a logistical and emotional toll on me, which I could very easily not do. I mean, it's not like I have medical bills that he should pay for or something.
3. What happens if I don't file a report? Guy continues to be an ass. This is kind of a problem. I hate to let that guy continue to exist in the world. Probably he is not as much of an ass usually, but I do feel bad letting him be out there in the world and thinking that whatever he does is ok.
4. Hold up - this case is dumb as hell, right?
1. But remember, this is because of the shove, not the bike lane.
1. However! If there were no bike lane, I would shrug it off. Like, I start arguing with some guy at a bar and he shoves me - there's no way I'm filing a police report.
2. If there were no shove, I wouldn't even think about it either! As a result, this makes me think that I'm playing "gotcha" - the result is, "I tweaked you enough that you fought back, and now that I've got a concrete instance of you technically battering me (though I was totally fine) I'm going to take you down."
3. Why am I playing gotcha? Is this maybe a case of misdirected anger at other things in my life, surfacing as righteous fury at bike lane jerks?
5. Ok, but this whole bike lane fixation is dumb as hell and I should get on with my life, right?
1. Well, "grant me the courage to change what I can, the serenity to accept what I can't, and the wisdom to tell the difference, right? (see also: Ram's answer to my last post)
2. Which category does bike-lane-parking fall under? ... probably a "serenity to accept what I can't." Fighting bike lane parkers one by one is Not Very Effective.
3. But overall bike infrastructure is a "courage to change what I can." Organize lobby phonebank vote etc!
1. On the other hand, I hate doing this kind of work.
2. So maybe this is a "serenity to accept what I can't, while doing the normal background amount of courage like voting and donating and stuff."
3. Yeah, ok, I can deal with that. Based on the last point on #4 here, this might be just misdirection of anger from just the general stress of life.
6. Still, f this guy.
1. But: maybe I caught him on the worst day of his life, who knows.
2. If that is wishful thinking and he is always an ass, well... that tends to be its own reward, and it's ok if I don't accelerate it.
3. For my part, usually I've found the best thing to do with Very Unpleasant People is to just stay away from them forever, if possible.
7. F these other bikers too. Seriously: what the hell? Nattering on about "well, you shouldn't be stickering people's cars"... I have little patience for this sentiment of "the status quo is wrong but let's not make anyone upset ever." If someone is standing up for what's right, you take their side 100%.
8. I get why people don't report crimes sometimes. Not at all saying this is anywhere near the same magnitude as sexual assault survivors but I kinda get the feeling of "I think I have a 90%-solid case to hammer this terrible human, but that's not 100%; I might just get laughed out of the room; and this whole thing is embarrassing and it would just feel really bad to open it back up."
9. That said, all the cops I talked to were remarkably cool about this whole thing! I can imagine them rolling their eyes a lot at this case, but nobody did. The lady at the station who was helping me figure out what would happen in this case, particularly, seemed very adept at conflict resolution and interested in helping me sort through what I wanted out of it.
10. Finally, notice for a moment all the weirdness that the metal box of the car adds to this situation. He feels threatened when I touched his metal box. (probably because many metal-box-damages cost hundreds or thousands to fix.) He has the luxury to withdraw from any situation he doesn't like, into his metal box. The size of his metal box is the problem in the first place (a double parked bike/scooter/longboard/etc probably doesn't even impede anyone). So: electric cars, rentable cars, self-driving cars, Uber/Lyft cars, (fill in the blank) cars are no solution. As long as we are addicted to these metal boxes that take you out of your environment, we'll have drivers (or passengers) being obnoxious because of them.

that "burnout generation" article, and catalogability

I'm sure if you're on internet things, you've seen "How millennials became the burnout generation."

1. It's well written and should be required reading if you're inclined to think "kids these days" are lazy!

2. I'm lucky to have been spared most of these problems, and I can mostly manage my life today. However, I have no kids, stable corporate job, no family members depending on me for medical care or anything, and no student loans or other unmanageable debts. I have no idea how people manage if those things are not the case.

3. It would be nice if you could put all the things you need to do into one nice list, then just do them. Unfortunately, they are uncatalogable, and probably have become more so in the last N years. Surely, the internet is partially to blame for this increase. But the worst excesses of the internet are kinda just symptoms of unchecked capitalism. Our economy is great at adding *more*, and it's great at consumer goods (and sometimes services) - but our problems are that we need less, and we need things that can't be fixed by consumer goods.

4. A lot of my time vanishes into bouts of blogging or otherwise reading/writing like this! I feel like this will likely drop off eventually. (post kids?) I wonder if I will just not even miss it, or if I will feel even more like I can't make sense of the world and then that will bother me.

5. This linked article ("Laziness does not exist") is great. I don't think I've ever met someone who I'd say is "just lazy." Literally everyone is doing their best given their circumstances. Nonjudgmental help is always 100x more useful than telling them "deal with it." Even when the answer needed is "deal with it", delivering that in a compassionate and understanding way is way more helpful than judgment. And this holds true at all levels - whether you're talking to a person one on one, or writing legislation. If you're inclined to give someone (or write legislation proposing) "tough love", you've gotta really be reflective and honestly answer "am I doing this because it's really right for them? or am I doing this because it's easier for me?"

2018 movies and albums

Movies:
1. Annihilation - trippy sci-fi horror, moderate squeamishness, not all loose ends tied up, great soundtrack. More on this.
2. Over the Garden Wall (ok this was a couple years ago but I just watched it this year and it blew me away) - delightful silly-but-serious animated adventure, like a Phantom Tollbooth but with characters you care about. Beautifully drawn, amazingly voice-acted. Some example clips.
3. Free Solo - unbelievable rock climbing videography (and well explained for those of us who don't really know rock climbing) and a fascinating portrait of Alex Honnold, masterful but humble climbing legend. Like, I found him more relatable than most movie heroes.

Albums:
1. Janelle Monae - Dirty Computer. A couple years ago, I thought Grimes was the defining pop star of our age. Nope, I was wrong, it's Monae, who can collaborate with Prince, Brian Wilson, and Pharrell on the same album and outdo them all. Crazy Classic Life evoking the rosy-skied American dream while pointing out that these dreams don't come true for everyone equally; guitar on Screwed; driving Django Jane; ethereal lyrics on Pynk; funky cool-down on Don't Judge Me; cathartic So Afraid; Americans bringing the opening theme home.
Like, of the two frequent collaborators, Grimes is a technical hero and aesthetic visionary (and we can separate the artist from the art when it comes to dubious choice of romantic interests) but Monae is all that and she has a lot more to say. Anyway, the critics got it right: this is just a front-to-back brilliant album. There's nothing to skip.
2. Gang Gang Dance - Kazuashita. Well, if you like Animal Collective and Bjork, then let's hang out and talk about how great this is. If Dirty Computer makes me feel like a beautiful Californian summer, Kazuashita makes me feel like I'm still traipsing around the world, still brave and hardy enough to keep getting as confused as possible.
Honorable mentions:
Yves Tumor - Safe in the Hands of Love (slightly experimental electronic)
Jon Hopkins - Singularity (grandiose electronic)
Young Fathers - Cocoa Sugar (pop/hip hop)
A.A.L. - 2012-2017 (house?)

Uncatalogability

At one point, I could make a list of everything I owned. I could even carry it all! That was neat. However, that doesn't work too well when you're older than a college sophomore. Nowadays, I could not make a list of everything I own. Even categorizing it gets into long-tail problems; I can fit a lot of things into "clothes" or "books", but then there's a lot of weird one-off things. The airlock jar topper that I use to make kimchi that lets fermentation gases bubble out but doesn't let stuff in? Where does that go?

I could probably at one point make a list of everything I spent money on, too. Magic cards, a couple of Star Wars figurines, and ... I don't know, that's about it. That ended probably by middle school. Now, even with credit card records and Mint, it's hard to do.

I'm gonna call these domains, where I can't make a list of them or fully categorize them, "uncatalogable." This makes it difficult to reason about these domains. Examples of difficulties:

1. how much do I spend on restaurants? Is it like... 10% of my expenses? How about, which ones are for social things with friends vs when I just don't feel like cooking? Should I try to eat out less? And if I did, would I save $100/year or $5000/year?
2. are there weird things falling through the cracks? Did Amazon fine-print sign me up for some new nonsense that charges me $7.99/month for extra Prime TV channels or something?
3. how much did I pay, the last time I booked a hotel? (I don't remember when or where that would have been.) I have very little idea of how I'd find that.
4. when I move... how long will that take? How many boxes will I need, and for what?

One partial solution comes to mind: search. This has worked for email, which long ago became uncatalogable. But that only solves problem 3 above (and is hard to apply broadly, e.g. to "things I own"). Problem 2 is mostly solvable by being sorta vigilant on Mint or my credit cards - I'm pretty good at that, I think.

But problem 1 is pretty unsolvable. And that (low-key) worries me. I feel like I'm just blundering around in the world, just trying not to own or buy "too many" things. Right now, my current sense of "too many" means I am saving a good chunk of money and I am not deluged with things. So I mean, that's fine, I guess. But it's also just coincidence - if my job paid less, or if we had more room in our house, I'm not sure I would know how to compensate accurately.

Feelin' pessimistic about our ability to live together in the world

Let's say on some metric Fox is 50 points to the right of NBC. How can we tell, then, if NBC is 0 and Fox is +50 (where more positive = more conservative I guess) or NBC is -25 and Fox is +25?

I guess media scholars would study this. This chart seems well-researched, at least at a glance. Also, pulls out the distinction between bias and truthfulness. (You can be leftist or rightist and still write true things, or fair interpretations of events. Also, you could be ideologically neutral and just write garbage.)

But if we don't listen to people who are doing this, then we're in a very game-able situation. If we want our news to be "fair and balanced" without deeply looking into what that means, it's really easy for one side to move the goalposts and then expect everyone to move to the new center. (Similarly in the political world. But let's stick with the news for now.)

It's even worse, though!

We all know polarization is rewarded by the Facebooks of the world, because it feeds anger and gets clicks. So there's not only no stop against Fox going full-reactionary (or indeed, CNN going full-leftist), but there are forces pushing them in that direction. I don't know why we shouldn't expect 2020 to be as influenced by Russian trolls as 2016 was. Anger still feels good (see the anger article linked earlier.) And potential consequences for this ongoing interference are really quite dire.

One hope: ad money drying up?

It's harder to fund things with ads than it used to be, I guess. But waiting for that feels like waiting for all our oil to run out before we get renewables. What can we, who are not Zuckerberg or Murdoch, do in the meantime? Beats me.

Man I got a whole other blog post to write but here's a couple quick links

Occasionally I'll save an article and then feel like "I gotta blog about this or otherwise post it or something, otherwise it'll be Lost Forever, and also I'll be Lost Forever because I don't know how to connect and process the million stimuli flying in from all corners constantly.

This is a little frustrating. It takes a lot of time. Maybe I should focus on doing this less. At any rate, here are some things that have resonated with me:

Chinese jaywalking cameras "catch" a bus ad.

The scariest part of this is not the fact that the cameras made a mistake - of course they did - but that there are jaywalking cameras! I'm sympathetic to Evgeny Morozov's point that, the more automatic and efficient the enforcement of rules is, the harder it is to ever change them, even if they are unjust or harmful (like jaywalking bans). See the point about Rosa Parks here. (though Alexis Madrigal rightly skewers this particular example; sigh being as grumpy as Morozov is likely to lead you into a ton of little fights like this that kinda distract from the overall message.)

Payless markets themselves as a fancy store, sells $20 shoes for $500 to Instagram Influencers, everyone pats themselves on the back for being clever.

Kind of along the same axis as "lol the fancy-wine world is fake." Ehh. A few things going on here:
- some of the value of fancy stuff is social signaling; that doesn't mean it's fake! Everyone is signaling constantly. You can't really opt out.
- fancy stuff often is higher quality. Tati has introduced me to the fact that Coach purses actually just last a lot longer than knockoff-Coach purses. Payless shoes fall apart quick.
- fancy stuff often is interesting along other axes; see also: fancy coffee. (a quote I love: "as you pay more for coffee, it doesn't necessarily get better, but it does get weirder.) I like clothes that have weird buttons and collars, unusual fabrics and cuts, and I've been frustrated that I can't find them. Well, I am learning they definitely exist; just at $200, not $50.
- though maybe Instagram Influencers aren't the best arbiters of quality anything? ... oh no, is this just me losing touch with The Youngs?

Why don't we treat intelligence as kinda-innate?

My take: because we conflate "IQ-type intelligence" with "the ability to do anything useful and also to have self worth in this world." Like, "why can't they get a job and lift themselves out of poverty?" We don't want to confront the fact that they might be in a world (like San Francisco) where all the jobs that pay well enough to afford cost of living require a lot of education and a lot of IQ-type intelligence. Kind of like "why can't that guy find a partner?" Well, because he's very short and lots of women just will not date a short guy. We don't tell him "work harder." Also, why do I feel uneasy writing this, as someone who's got a lot of IQ-type intelligence, but I don't feel uneasy saying I've got relatively a lot of height and therefore some advantages in the dating world?

AI thinks like a corporation, and that's worrying

Of course it does, and of course it is. Alternately: corporations think like AIs. AIs maximize paperclips; corporations maximize dollars. Probably the only reason the entire world hasn't been destroyed yet is that no corporation has been good enough or smart enough; being run by thousands of people means you can't really move that fast to do anything.

I love categorizations of The World like this

This model by Robert Kegan:

- says humans develop through something like 5 stages

- suggests the most important to adults are Communal (3), Systematic (4), and Fluid (5)

- maps on to my experience of how the world works

- probably mostly exists to flatter the egos of people who think themselves to be at stage 5

Depression as mental/emotional overwhelm

Here's a hypothesis about a way my brain works sometimes. Epistemic status: talking out of my ass.

You know that feeling where you're overwhelmed with a problem and you just go "this is overwhelming, I can't think about this anymore"?

I'm gonna guess that's what happens with a lot of Trump voters. "The government doesn't work for me anymore. It's so broken, I don't know where to start. Forget it, let's blow it all up and start over. This guy says he's gonna blow it all up and start over, good enough for me."
Person who is not feeling this way: "But... yeah, ok, we need massive overhaul, but in the meantime, shouldn't we do X good thing instead of Y bad thing? Plus, your guy isn't going to actually blow it all up, he's probably going to make things worse."
Person who is feeling this way: "Ehhhhh accepting this train of thought would involve thinking about this space that is too hard to think about. Forget it, blow it all up!"

Similarly with brains: "Life seems really hard and meaningless. I can't really figure out how to fix it. So what do I think about life as a whole? Ehh, forget it, it must just be hopeless anyway."
Person who is not feeling this way: "Yeah, but... isn't it still worthwhile to do thing X instead of Y? Like, don't we prefer some futures over others? And isn't it meaningful to pursue the better ones?"
Person who is feeling this way: "Accepting this train of thought would involve thinking about this space that is too hard to think about. Life is difficult and meaningless, etc. Plus, making a better future means we're going from -100 to -99; yes I think we should do that, but it's hard to get excited about that or find it meaningful."

Just like with Trump voters, I don't think this is a very productive mindset. Luckily, we don't have a Spiritual Fox News, so nobody's trying to convince me to spread the word that life is meaningless. If you don't feel this way, great, keep it up! Similarly, I am continually trying to move this switch for myself. It's probably actually good to try to make a better future, and to feel like it's meaningful to do so.

(Note! Obligatory disclaimer: not crying for help or anything; I have a great support network and am doing fine. The intent of this post is to explain one variety of depressed mind a bit. Also know that I would not cry for help by vagueblogging; if I forget to post a disclaimer like this in on any future post it doesn't mean anything, don't worry.)

on "best"

"I found the best burger place in America. Then I killed it."

Small Brain
Ok. Let's imagine burger places could be reduced to one dimension: Goodness. Local McDonalds: 12/100. Stanich's: 98/100. Then this article would make sense, and the aftermath would be just tragic unintended consequences. Maybe there's a Secret Burger Guide out there that actually knows the next Best place and is hiding it and you can only know it if you're in the Secret Burger Cabal and when you go to this place that is 97/100 you'll say "yes, this is definitely better than the 90/100 place I went to last week."

Medium Brain
Obviously, burger places are not one-dimensional and this is nonsense. Let's imagine burger places are reducible to a small number of dimensions, like 3: taste, atmosphere, and value. Then there is no one "best"; you could average them, but that's not really what people want. You as a reader could then decide "I think atmosphere is the most important" and make your decision based on that. There might still be articles like this: "I found the best tasting burger in America." We'll still have the same problem - it'll just be diluted a bit, as the Best Taste, Best Atmosphere, and Best Value place all get deluged with 1/3 the crowds. Also, each of those people will probably be a little disappointed, as they didn't really want only the taste of the burger.

Large Brain
Obviously, burger places are not 3-dimensional and this is nonsense. Let's imagine burger places have 100 dimensions. Then you could maximize each dimension and spread the crowds out 100 ways - everyone picks their favorite dimension and maximizes that. Burger places start to specialize in only 1 dimension: e.g. Fries Crispiness. Crispy Fries enthusiasts make a pilgrimage to the #1 Fries Crispiness place. The Fries Crispiness place stops making burgers, because everyone's just coming for their fries. Specialization of labor! Everyone's a little disappointed. Also, the fries taste bad because the #1 Fries Crispiness place isn't also the #1 Fries Savoriness place.

Obviously, reducing things to 100 dimensions then maximizing one is dumb and this is nonsense. We can turn every burger place into a 100-dimensional feature vector; your preferences are also a 100-dimensional feature vector; we maximize the dot product of these for you. Now everyone gets super-personalized burger recommendations. Turns out the best one for me is 2000 miles away - eh, still cool, I can make a pilgrimage there someday! There's still some clustering near the top, as those that are pretty good on a lot of dimensions get recommended to more people. But, it's not bad. Still, on Tuesday I might be looking for a quick tasty burger, and on Friday for the best burger in the city. Preferences change over time. Plus, each burger place changes over time: on Friday they're packed, so I'm not gonna go there then.

Exploding Brain
Ok, so burger places aren't 100 dimensions; they're 1000 dimensions plus 1000 temporal dimensions, and so am I. Now we can no longer get enough data to fill this absurdly high dimensional space. We can do pretty well, and we do. Still, I have to take a long survey every time I want to go out, just to see what my temporal preferences are like now, and that's annoying. Plus, sometimes it's just wrong. To test it out, I spent a month picking burger places by throwing darts at a map, and I did just about as well, and it was a lot easier.

Galaxy Brain
Burger places aren't 2000 dimensions and this is nonsense. Burger places are in roughly 4 categories: bad, bad and I have a story about it, good, good and I have a story about it. Here, "story" can mean:
- this place is better than the average "good" place; I would go out of my way to eat here
- this place is fine in most dimensions and great on one
- this place is not good usually, but if it's 2am and everything's closed and you were out partying it's great late-night food
- it's so bad you never want to go there; I got sick after eating there
- I have fond memories of this place from college
These stories are in too many dimensions to even model. You can never get enough data to accurately predict if someone will have an "interesting story" about a place. And importantly, you should stop trying. Every second you spend on it is spinning your gears; every story about "The Best burger place" might accidentally ruin it.

Conclusions That Are Not As Profound As I Thought When Starting This Post
Burger places have the following properties: temporally varying, high supply, low stakes, result measured in feelings and stories. As a result, if you wanted to pick a place to live and you loved burgers, you should optimize for "the greatest number of diverse burger places" rather than "the best." See also: coffee, wine, music, movies.

Edit: Even Bigger Galaxy Brain
One review doesn't ruin a place - spousal abuse and ignoring court orders do. Welp :P

What makes the Spelunkyverse possible?

Spelunky is a video game. It's pretty fun, and pretty difficult. I played through Spelunky classic and it took hours upon hours to even get through the game. It's also procedurally generated - which means each time you're crawling through a new random dungeon.

Spelunky was released in 2009/2012, and people are still trying to break it. Here is a high score tracker - note it's been updated 9 times in Oct/Nov 2018.

And these high scores are not just "I managed to do things 0.01 seconds faster through quick reflexes" - these are "I discovered that, if I fire the shotgun a bunch, it rearranges what layer gold spawns on in the screen, which means I can use a glitch to collect each gold piece twice." It's like if Usain Bolt spent years practicing weird things on the track, and then discovered if he walked on his hands he could finish the 100m dash in 5 seconds. More details in this fascinating only-semi-dense article.

(For an example of one of the tomes in the Library of Spelunxandria, maybe try The Spelunker's Guide to Render Dupe. More general info in the Wiki.)

Why do people do this? How do people do this so well?

A few reasons seem obvious to me (caveat: all just hand waving here):

Spelunky has intentional depth

Some credit has to go to Derek Yu, maker of the game, who has inserted some really-fiendishly-difficult challenges/easter eggs, like the Eggplant Run. This encourages exploration.

Spelunky has accidental depth

Some of the "glitches" in this game are the result of programming shortcuts. For example, the Ghost is supposed to be unkillable, but in practice it just has 9999 HP. Also, nothing's supposed to hurt the ghost, but maybe accidentally, lava deals it 99 damage. Therefore, you can kill the ghost by making it go through lava 101 times.

Spelunky offers immediate, deterministic, reproducible feedback

If I had to pick one, this is the biggest reason. In a biology experiment, you have to wait a week for your cells to grow - so if there's some complex thing that happens only when 100 variables are all just so, you'll take a million weeks to get there. But on a video game, you can very quickly test your hypotheses.

There are low stakes to experimenting in Spelunky

Worst case, you just wasted some time.

Spelunky can be easily internet-collaborated

Like, if 0.0001% of any population will love Thing X, that's 1 person in a city of a million people. But, it's 7000 people in the world! If they can collaborate, great. It's not easy for them to collaborate on, say, ending homelessness. But it's really easy to collaborate on something that's on computers and offers immediate, deterministic, reproducible feedback.

Most problems are not like this

I guess that's all. My brain keeps going to "... this is amazing! can we build this kind of arcane tower in other domains?" but that way lies Gamification. Basically: hard things are hard.

Appendix: "who are the Pannenkoeks of other video games" - Pannenkoek being a legendary Mario 64 researcher.

"I'll have to eat my way out!"

I can't believe I've never posted this Simpsons clip. (0:00-0:55, minus the Lisa bit.) Bart pumps Groundskeeper Willie's shed full of creamed corn and he decides to just eat it until he can get out. This is such a metaphor to me: usually for a bad situation that, for whatever reason, the only way out is to just eat for a long time. I hate those situations.

(I didn't mean for it to be about garmonbozia, but maybe it is. Welp.)

Thinking and feeling

A friend recently suggested that maybe a useful guide to think about phases of your life could be "what is the big challenge you're dealing with now?" I kinda like that framing. (It's not super clean, as you're usually dealing with many of them at once; I'm gonna ignore that for now.)

One of my challenges for the past ~10 years has been roughly "to understand what it means to feel, to value feeling, and to get good at feeling."

I'm assuming there are two ways our brains and bodies work: thinking and feeling. Maybe call this System 2 and 1, respectively, like Kahneman, but I don't mean to just talk about decision making here. I mean that there are two ways you can experience reality: thinking about it and feeling it. And I'm relatively good at thinking about it and not as good at feeling it.

(in some ways, my meditation teacher and therapist are telling me the same message, just from different perspectives. convergent theories are encouraging.)

Why is this hard?
- every day I go to work and practice thinking. I don't much have to practice feeling.
- I really like thinking. Like, I am currently spending spare time doing puzzles with some work friends, and it is one of the things that I enjoy most right now.
- my standard tactic when something is hard is to break it down into smaller pieces, figure those out, put it back together. This explicitly does not work when your goal is "feel your body."
- I also like things with nice progress markers. Thinking-mode tends to rack these up: points on your video game, dollars in the bank, miles biked, whatever. Feeling-mode doesn't tend to have them.

What gives me hope?
- feeling is usually at least kinda pleasant, when you can get yourself to do it.
- there's occasionally a marker of progress. I can stop for a second, close my eyes, and feel a kind of "body high"; what Goenka might call the "subtle sensations." Note that this pleasant state is not the goal! But it's a nice sign that I have skills that maybe I didn't previously have.
- if I consider myself an HCI person, HCI is the most feeling-oriented of the computer science fields, I think. So there's hope that I'm not doing 100% thinking all day. (however, Data Science is more thinky. so it goes.)
- feeling-tasks tend not to feel like work. It's probably easier to be good at thinking and working on feeling, than vice versa.

Why bother?
I think because mostly, thinking helps you accomplish things, but feeling makes you want to live. And I'm pretty good at the "how" of life but always searching for the "why."

Unrelatedly, some things that I have found interesting recently:

This story, "Sort By Controversial", is so amusing.
It doesn't map onto our current world just right, because the problem is not that we keep getting these perfectly true/false statements; the problem is that there are people spending all their time to make these statements more controversial. (some actively like Fox, some clumsily like Twitter.)

"AI winter is on its way" - are there hype cycles for high level concepts like "AI"? Do I want this to happen or not? Does it matter? I'm always a grump but I think he's right; I think we might hit some limits (like with self driving cars) where it looked like we were going to hit 100% but we actually hit 90% and the last 10% is harder than the first 90%.

Finally watching Season 2 of Master of None, and it's kind of great. There's rocky bits, and I feel uncomfortable sometimes because, basically, I don't really want The Olds to think that We Old Millennials are like that, but it kinda nails it sometimes. In particular, notice how much of their life revolves around eating! It's like, I don't know what else to do, so I might as well eat good things!

I recently bought a dehumidifier for the basement in Pittsburgh. What humidity level should I keep it at? Beats me, but this pdf from North Dakota State University suggests around 60% in summer and 40% in winter. Thanks, Stack Overflow!

Juliana v. US is bonkers, in a great way. I am surprised that "Sue the entire government for f'ing up all the climate forever" is a legit thing to bring to trial, but I guess so! It feels about right, too: like, we need a carbon tax 20 years ago, and I am a little bit personally mad at every damn Boomer in power who keeps twiddling their thumbs (or worse). Yes, it's a collective action thing - what if we tax and China doesn't, etc - but man, who's going to take the lead if we don't? Props to these young folks who figured out one more way to fight the apathy.

my current hindrance is righteous fury at cars parking in the bike lanes

A little context: the route I usually use to get to work, Valencia St, has bike lanes. It's also full of cars parking in the bike lanes; reliably 3 or 4 on an average ride down the street.

I am pretty good at navigating traffic on a bike. I haven't been hit by a car because someone parked in the bike lane. It probably raises my relative risk of getting hit. Not by a ton. It probably raises some other people's relative risk by a ton.

Some things I have tried when I see people parked in bike lanes:

1. ignoring it

2. just ringing my bike bell a bunch

3. yelling at them "don't park in the bike lanes!" as I ride past

4. taking a photo and reporting it to SF 311

5. stopping in front of them until they come out of the store and then confronting them. (this I save for particularly egregious offenders and/or luxury cars.)

6. sending notes to my local representatives/etc asking for more protected bike lanes (with like a barrier so cars physically can't park there)

7. waiting in front of the car until a parking cop comes by and waving at them to give them a ticket

(Some of them are a bit harsh, so I balance it based on the situation: if it's a harried uber eats driver making $4/hr, I don't take out my frustration on them. I try to save the angrier ones for the people who are Plain Old Bein' an Entitled Ass.)

Some things I have thought about doing:

8. printing out bumper stickers that say "I parked in a bike lane"

9. calmly lecturing them that, by getting their coffee twelve seconds faster, they are increasing my risk of actually dying

10. same as 9, but instead of lecture, I actually really try to connect with them and understand their needs

Effects on the driver:

1 (ignore) does nothing, of course.

2 (bell) does nothing too, although maybe it lowers the chance of dooring me.

3 (yell) maybe makes them feel bad, maybe makes them feel like "bikers are jerks."

4 (report) does almost nothing. It means it gets included in SF's bike lane stats, but they explicitly say they will not give a ticket for this.

5 (confront) seems the only one that actually does anything - I tell them off, they go "eh ok whatever" and drive off. Maybe their day is a little less pleasant. It also takes the most of my time and raises my blood pressure.

6 (legislate) maaaybe causes change, slowly slowly slowly. also, it's hard to say "we should focus more on this" when there are homeless people dying in the streets and apartments cost $3000/month.

7 (wait for cop) does nothing; I had a cop literally drive past me and a car-parked-in-bike-lane today.

8 (bumper sticker) would piss them off and maybe give them consequences not to park in bike lanes! it feels somewhat disproportionate. I'm fine with that; traffic tickets are also disproportionate to account for the fact that we usually won't catch you. but knowing my luck and current laws though, I'd probably end up getting a ticket for vandalism.

9 (lecture) won't do anything. they'll say "yeah ok" and then park in the bike lane again.

10 (connect) ... also won't do anything. it's hella hard to connect with a rando on the street. Especially for the kind of length of talk that will lead to connection and actually changing their mind.

So, I mean, nothing is effective! Also, some of these raise my blood pressure and/or waste my time. Also also, maybe I occasionally road-rage at the wrong person, which makes the world worse - there's nonzero fallout here.

Which leads to the difficult question: when you are powerless to a small injustice except to ignore it... is ignoring it the best/wisest/Zennest thing to do?

(this doesn't map nicely onto other stories about injustices that we know about, because it's pretty minor. feels like, I dunno, 2 micromorts/year? - which will lead to nonzero deaths in a city of a million people and therefore should be fixed, but for me personally I could just ignore it.)

(ok, I've left out choice 11. walk into the coffeeshop that they're parked outside of, and say "does anyone have a Black Porsche outside? it's being towed right now" and then wait for them to come out for it and then go "April fool, move your car, you goon." this one I haven't tried yet; just waiting for the opportunity :D

"To Mothman"

David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth, not quite Mothmanning but it's the best visual I can come up with

The new Adventure Zone arc, Amnesty, (minimal spoilers) includes The Mothman, a character most famously from The Mothman Prophecies who can sorta tell the future. Griffin McElroy, the DM, explains his powers like he's watching a bunch of TV screens that are all possible futures. He can't tell which of them will happen, but I think he knows that one or more of them will - so if they all converge on one thing happening soon, he knows it will very likely happen. Mostly, I want to focus on the ability to see many future stories.

This seems useful as a conversational meme when you're designing a thing, making a law, whatever. These stories are all happening, or will all happen, with some probability. For example, if you make US immigration more lax, there will likely be more immigrants committing crimes. There will also be more brilliant geniuses creating amazing things in our country. There will be more people speaking other languages. There will be more people who are willing to work in construction or farming. Some current-Americans will lose jobs, some current-Americans will get jobs, or will be able to create jobs.

This makes it frustrating when people use stories to argue points. "We shouldn't allow more immigration, because look at this immigrant who committed a crime." No, that's just one Mothman screen. How big is it? How likely is it, how important is it?

I guess it's useful when you haven't yet decided on the set of all screens. It's worthwhile to say "we should consider x." But once it's been put on a screen, you're not allowed to use stories to increase (or decrease) the importance of any one screen. You can only do that with data (to show probability or magnitude of an event) or philosophy (to suggest why we should care more/less about an event).

Anyway, I'm not going to change how people argue, forever, in one internet post. The best I can hope for here is that people start using "to Mothman" as "to look holistically at all possible futures." (perhaps also "to reverse-Mothman" to mean "to look holistically at all possible causes.")

oh my god vote

ok yes please do it ok thanks

California! San Francisco! What have we got here! Here's how I'm planning to vote so far, but open to change. Change my mind.

State Ballot Props

Prop 1 - Yes. "Issues $4 billion in bonds for housing programs and veterans' home loans."
Prop 2 - Yes. "Authorizes state to use revenue from millionaire's tax for $2 billion in bonds for homelessness prevention housing."
Prop 3 - Weak yes. "Issues $8.877 billion in bonds for water-related infrastructure and environmental projects."
Prop 4 - Weak yes. "Issues $1.5 billion in bonds for children's hospitals." I guess I like hospitals? And children?
Prop 5 - No. "Revises process for homebuyers who are age 55 or older or severely disabled to transfer their tax assessments." Sounds innocuous enough - but this would expand Prop 13, aka the ballot measure that passed once that ensured that we'd never be able to raise property taxes again.
Prop 6 - Hell no. "Repeals 2017's fuel tax and vehicle fee increases and requires public vote on future increases." Speaking of hamstringing our ability to ever raise taxes. And like... if we're going to tax anything, it should be cars.
Prop 7 - Yes. "Authorizes legislature to provide for permanent daylight saving time if federal government allows." Someday we could get out of this stupid charade!
Prop 8 - Weak yes. "Requires dialysis clinics to issue refunds for revenue above a certain amount." But really, beats me. Something something, this is a union dispute that made it onto the ballot somehow.
Prop 10 - Weak no. "Allows local governments to regulate rent on any type of housing." This is the most reasonable-to-disagree IMO. Rent control is a tricky issue, there's good reason to support it here in SF even if I don't like it in general. But as one of my friends said, "It seems like right now rent control is fairly available to tenants who want it and we have a lot of tenant rights, so the current setup has most of the benefit without the distortion." But, this might be worthwhile.
Prop 11 - No. "Allow ambulance providers to require workers to remain on call during breaks paid." Why are we ballot propping this?
Prop 12 - Weak yes. "Bans sale of meat from animals confined in spaces below specific sizes." Sure. The less gross our food supply system, the better. Some concern that this is deceptive and actually rolls back some protections. I'll keep an eye on this.

State Elected Officials

Governor: Gavin Newsom. Duh.
Senator: Kevin De Leon. Feinstein's still living in the good old days of decorum and decency, while Senate Republicans have abandoned those. I wish we were still in the good old days too, but I'd rather fight in the awful new days than just get eaten by them. Plus, I kiiinda don't think you should be allowed to be one of the 120-ish most powerful people in the country at age 85 to 91. (We'll see how this belief ages.)
Attorney General: Xavier Becerra.
Minor statewide offices: Hernandez, Yee, Ma, Padilla, Lara, Thurmond all seemed fine to me before.

SF Ballot Props

Prop A - Yes. $425M to rebuild the seawall.
Prop B - No. "Puts forward guidelines that any city department or the Board of Supervisors could enact to protect privacy in the collection, storage and sharing of personal information of San Francisco residents and visitors." I'm in favor of privacy as much as the next person. But city-level is not the level at which to get Facebook to quit their nonsense. Plus, nonbinding: more fuss without doing anything.
Prop C - Hell yes. "Imposes an additional tax on individuals and businesses that receive more than $50 million in gross income in San Francisco, to fund homelessness services and housing." Of course!
Prop D - Yes. "Levies an additional tax on the gross receipts of cannabis-related businesses in San Francisco and extends local business taxes to companies based elsewhere but doing business in San Francisco." Sure. If you're gonna tax anything, cannabis seems as good a thing as any.
Prop E - No. "Allocates a portion of the city’s hotel tax for arts and culture programs." Let the supervisors do their job, don't tell them where the money goes, and especially don't tell them where the money should go in order to fund unnecessary-but-nice things.

SF Candidates

District 8 supervisor - Mandelman. He seems decent and is the only actual candidate here.
SF Assessor: Carmen Chu. Happy to delegate my thought here to the Yimby guide.
Bart board: Janice Li. Yimby and SF Bike Coalition employee.
School board: Collins and Moliga seem widely recommended, and Parker for the Yimbys.
College board: Davila and Selby also seem widely recommended, and Oliveri for the Yimbys.

Some endorsements and sources:

Yimby Action
SPUR
Cal Bike (in an email; they just said Newsom, Yes on 1, No on 6 and 10.)
SF Chronicle

SF League of Pissed-off Voters

Planned Parenthood
Bay Curious podcast doin' a week about the ballot props.
Jef Poskanzer
Pete Rates the Propositions

I am frustrated by old businesses, part N

So, a fun thing to do is to try to figure out how old the "Young X" is in whatever hobby/interest you're looking into. I joined SPUR when I moved to SF, and qualified for their "young urbanists" group, because apparently "young urbanists" are up to 40. I heard from someone that "young opera-goers" are up to 50. Hah!

Anyway, I kinda like thinking about money, and I get the impression that "young people who will take time out of their day to talk to a banker about investments" are up to about 50 also. And bank people are like "why don't these irresponsible Youths think about money more???"

Dudes, as a profession, you can totally get The Youths. But you're totally blowing it.

1. Don't start the conversation with "when do you want to retire?" A. as soon as possible, and B. I don't have a damn clue! I could literally see myself retiring at 37 or at 95.
2. Don't ask about my goals. The world is so uncertain that my goal is to make a bunch of money and then see what I can do, when I get there. Imagine setting a goal, in 2005, that you're going to buy a house in 10 years. Good luck!
2. Let us take more risks. We all know that the stock market goes up 6% a year if you can deal with huge swings. Assume we can deal with huge swings.
3. Back up all your numbers. We don't trust you. We need to be able to derive all this junk down to first principles, because we know that you probably don't 100% have our best interests at heart. And that's ok! Let us do math, and we'll decide how much to trust you. All your fancy software you wrote, that runs on like Silverlight ActiveX Java applets and tells me what percent chance we'll have of retiring at our chosen time, we do not trust; we usually know how much sand all those models are built on. (and if we don't, we should.)
4. Don't call me on the phone, please? A phone call is reserved for either A. a scheduled thing; B. a literal emergency; or C. a company we hate. Email is fine. That's how corporations talk with humans.
5. Relatedly: be good at doing the basics. I want to be able to like, deposit, withdraw, buy and sell things, and that is it. If it takes me 5 business days and two phone calls to do that, bug off.
6. Ah forget it, just close up shop and let Wealthfront and Betterment eat your lunch. Whatever.

We now own a house in Pittsburgh

... but are not moving there for about 5 years.

it us

Why buy a house?

1. Why should we buy a house?

We want space for two kids, eventually, in a place where we can walk/bike to work and 90% of other things we need, in a place where we have some roots. The "roots" thing narrows it down quite a lot: it basically means Pittsburgh, Cleveland, SF, or maybe Seattle or Miami. The "walkable" thing rules out Cleveland and Miami. Our Seattle roots are tenuous, and it puts us even farther away from most of our family - plus it's like SF but with worse weather.

Two kids plus us means probably a 3 bedroom apartment. 2br could maybe work, but I kinda believe in kids' right to a place where they can shut the door and be alone, even if it's a small such place.

Renting a 3br gets difficult and expensive - what, (hand waving) $6 or 7k/month in SF? Even if you can find such a place, you often get above the rent vs. buy threshold. (This calculator has been my gold standard.)

Also, if it's close in price, owning means you don't have to deal with landlords, which is nice. So, for example, you can own a garage and put something besides a car in it. (This is a true restriction that has happened to us.)

2. Why should everyone buy a house?

I'm not sure everyone should. Particularly, if you don't want a family, and you're in a pricey place like SF, you might just be better off renting forever. Do the rent vs. buy calculations.

It *might* be a good investment. I'm not as sure of this as past generations. For example, how could housing prices in the Bay continue to go up? At some point, all the interesting excited young rich people just decide, f this, we're out. (Ahem.) Monaco's pretty to visit, but probably actually wouldn't be fun to live there.

That said, we could just wait for 5 years and then buy a house when we want to move. But we are sort of guessing the market will continue to skyrocket like it always does, so better to buy sooner than later.

Sidebar: this sucks.

You shouldn't have to speculate in order to live, with your family, in a decent walkable community! Housing should not be an investment; it should be a place to live. Notice that almost every big city in the US has a housing crisis? This is because people buy an investment, then they have incentives to keep it valuable and therefore scarce. F that. More on this later.

Why Pittsburgh?

1. Why should anyone buy in Pittsburgh?

To own a 3br place in (a walkable area of) SF would be probably $1.5 million. Oakland would work; then we're looking at $1 million. Seattle, maybe $700k? I dunno, hand wavey numbers, it might not be that bad. But still, even after working in lucrative jobs and saving money for a while, we'd be in debt for approximately forever.

In Pittsburgh, $200k. This frees up so much of our life: we are making big bucks at corporate places now, but we don't have to do that forever, if we basically don't pay rent.

And I'm still bullish on Pittsburgh. Growing tech scene and affordability blah blah, but like, I feel a kind of bottom-up grassroots energy there that I don't feel in SF. I know people who:
- went from barista-ing to big-successful-coffeeshop-owning pretty quickly
- started a monthly pierogi dinner to fund the opening of a now-nationally-renowned restaurant
- created, produced, performed in, done tech for top-notch interactive theater shows
- started the Pittsburgh Comedy Festival that has hosted folks like W. Kamau Bell and Aubrey Plaza
- started technology companies, sometimes fabulously successfully
- started a pizza truck that became a pizza restaurant
- run a beloved community bike shop for decades
- campaigned and passed legislation legalizing ADUs/granny flats in Garfield
- run a worker-owned construction guild

In SF, who do I know who've started things? We're all just tryin' to scrape a few (hundred thousand) dollars off The Man. Can't blame us, but it's less exciting.

Now, selection bias, right? These are the people I've known through most of my 20s, so of course they're the people I know who've done amazing grassroots things. I've met some amazing SFers who are living the kind of life I want to lead, but I've also met lots of people shooting for the moon and missing badly.

Also about Pittsburgh:
- it's reasonably well protected from natural disasters. We're not just waiting for "the big one" like SF or Seattle.
- it's not gonna sink into the ocean in 20 years (sorry Miami)
- the hills are beautiful
- you can get a ferret
- it's possible to effect some meaningful political change, as it's not just all Dems
- speaking of which, my local representative is a friend of a friend and a Democratic Socialists of America member
- It's definitely in Appalachia, not the East Coast or the Midwest. Colonized by angry Scots-Irish, not Puritans. This has upsides and downsides: I like the "individual liberty" angle, but I don't like the fact that they may not recognize we've all got to get along (and ideally would be close together). Plus, IMO, the more thinking, the better, which might make me a "lowland aristocrat." So, mixed bag - but it's a unique energy, and different than you'd get even a couple hours north. Plus, as someone who's spent plenty of time there, I might have a bit of cred with which to help make it better. Listen to the current Adventure Zone for the kind of story you might set there.

2. Why should we in particular buy in Pittsburgh?

I mean, the above, plus roots. Plus we can live in scenic wonderful Bloomfield! With all its crummy bars, badly named vape shops, and awful Little Italy Days!

Seriously, I love this neighborhood, because you can get a sweet row house without a lawn, be 10 minutes biking to so many cool places, and live with the few weirdos who can still afford the East End. Come visit and I'll take you to Constellation Coffee, Apteka, Kraynick's bike shop, White Whale or the Big Idea (depending on your interests), Lou's Little Corner Bar or Brillobox (same), and Clothes Minded, and then you'll want to live here too.

Wait, are we The Man now?

Maybe. Have we always been? Yeah, that too.
I have mixed feelings about becoming a homeowner and a landlord! Especially having seen the devastation that homeowners and landlords have committed in SF. I mean, like everything, it's not landlords that are bad inherently, it's asshole landlords. Plus, it's not homeowners are bad, it's nimby homeowners. Basically, I pledge to always support new housing (especially affordable housing!) in Pittsburgh, to support tenants' rights, and to be a good landlord. When it comes time to sell, I want to get out of this house exactly the money that we put into it, plus inflation.

(ugh yes this contradicts the above point about investment. Let me walk this narrow-but-I-think-consistent line: I will be happy if we get out what we put in, plus inflation. I will not flagellate myself if we get more. I will not make any decisions that will hurt other people, including those who don't live here yet, because of "property values.")

How?

The "normal" way, really. Just started talking to a realtor. I don't have many tips here, but it went kind of like this:
- Look at houses online. (skip the "blue dots" on zillow, those are like auctions and stuff, for risk takers and experts only.)
- Get pre-approved for mortgage, if you're doing a mortgage. (for Pittsburgh houses, if you're a Rich San Franciscan and have saved for a while, you might be able to pay cash!)
- Ask realtor to line up some house tours. If you are far away and your parents are in town, maybe they can do some house touring for you. (true story: we saw the house in person for the first time on closing day. this is maybe crazy but yolooooo)
- Ideally, get a contractor to go through to figure out what work you need to do and how much it will cost. This is difficult; I think mostly they don't want to go through a house that you "might" buy, it's just a waste of time.
- Make an offer. In Pittsburgh you don't need to worry about 14 people offering on day 1. (In SF you do.) You have to sign scary papers to do this. Now you're technically locked in to buy it, though you can walk after the home inspection if there's anything wrong, and there's always something wrong.
- They accept your offer; this begins the "contingency period." During this time you will need to have an inspector do a formal inspection.
- Also have your contractor give you estimates. If they know you've made an offer, they are more willing to do this.
- Work with bank to figure out mortgage.
- After your inspector and your contractor get back to you, you can offer less money on the house. "We will need to fix X and Y to make the house livable, and we didn't know that before we made the offer, so give us $10k off the price we agreed on." Or you can walk away. There will probably be negotiating.
- hem and haw a lot, and then sign a bunch of papers that you mostly understand at a Closing meeting!

Where?

Not gonna say the address because public blog, but it's in Bloomfield. For more details, let's just say Soulja Boy would be right at home.

Oh yeah btw want to rent it?

Like, if you're a friend, or a friend of a friend, it'd be awesome to rent you a room (... or more?). We're trying to keep it pretty friendly. And we will be v good landlords.