tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-319117362024-03-13T13:17:09.664-07:00But I'm probably wrong...... really, I don't know.Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-30497289189109522642023-12-04T00:28:00.000-08:002023-12-04T00:52:38.739-08:00Where the transfers are efficient but the wires are all crossed<b>(a)</b>: Merry Christmas! I got you something!<br>
<b>(b)</b>: Oh, really? After you sent me <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quXEUVLX5II" target="_blank">that video</a> I wasn't expecting anything.<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Well you'd mentioned you were getting me something, so —<br>
<b>(b)</b>: — joke's on you, halfway through the video I returned your gift.<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Well... are you gonna open it?<br>
<b>(b)</b> <i>(slides finger under wrapping paper, carefully pulls under the tape, slightly tears the wrapping paper)</i>: Gah!<br>
<b>(a)</b>: You have to read the tag first!<br>
<b>(b)</b>: OK, it says, “To: (b).” That's me! “From... Isfahan Lake, Illinois, distribution center?”<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Well they pronounce it more like “iz-FAY-en Lake” in Illinois<br>
<b>(b)</b>: “From: iz-FAY-en Lake, Illinois,” where the men are men and the women speak flawless Persian. <i>(tears open the rest of the paper)</i> Alright, what's this?<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Heh, there's a story here...<br>
<b>(b)</b>: <i>(opens box, pulls out a hideous Christmas sweater with pulsing LED lights)</i> Aw, you... uh... shouldn't have! So let's hear this story, where did you find this thing?<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Amazon. Searched, “Christmas sweaters so ugly they'll take you back to 2009”<br>
<b>(b)</b>: Amazon... isn't that more like... <i>(scrolls on phone)</i> Manaus, Ohio, Fulfillment Center?<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Oddly enough they say it “MANN-ayz”, exactly how your dad says “mayonnaise” —<br>
<b>(b)</b>: — I see Illinois hasn't cornered the market on linguists <em>or</em> pedants —<br>
<b>(a)</b>: — anyway this is from a third-party seller running a niche import business from Indiana —<br>
<b>(b)</b>: — living in the farmlands outside the small town of Pyongyang, Indiana, which has been in decline since the grain elevator closed in the early 90s—<br>
<b>(a)</b>: — actually kinda near Danville —<br>
<b>(b)</b>: — Isn't Danville in Illinois?<br>
<b>(a)</b>: <em>Near</em> Danville. I was late getting this ordered and apparently this was a hot item so it was out of stock at the Amazon facility in Mayonnaiseville or whatever, so our seller got a text message at 5:22 AM Eastern Standard and ran out to his shed —<br>
<b>(b)</b>: — I know it's a week early, but you really need to make a resolution about your sleep schedule<br>
<b>(a)</b>: <i>(sings)</i> Maybe it's much too... early in the game...<br>
<b>(b)</b>: I'm serious!<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Oh, come on, it was barely past 2 out here, Indiana is just really far west in its ti—<br>
<b>(b)</b>: — <i>(in mid-20th-century filmreel voice)</i> Pyongyang, Indiana, feels almost <em>western</em>, despite its Eastern Standard time zone and —<br>
<b>(a)</b>: — He grabbed his car keys and stumbled into his boots and started the car to let it warm up and ran out to the shed and double-checked the order and grabbed this sweater and put it in a box and taped it shut and carried it to the car and spun out of his driveway on the way to the Post Office.<br>
<b>(b)</b>: Paint a picture for me. What's he driving? Mid '80s... Oldsmobile... Delta 88... coupe?<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Uh, so like... you're the one that's <em>from</em> the midwest... don't they have road salt there? 80s GM ain't lasting 40 years in that. He's driving a 10 year-old anonymous wedge-shaped crossover like everyone else.<br>
<b>(b)</b>: You're no fun! It's Christmas! Give him something good!<br>
<b>(a)</b>: I'll give the actual hero of the story something good.<br>
<b>(b)</b>: Fine. He gets to the Post Office, just in time to salute a mail carrier in a creaky Grummond LLV pulling out to do the local rounds.<br>
<b>(a)</b>: America!<br>
<b>(b)</b>: America!<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Right, so he sends this thing off and later that day it arrives at the big distribution center in Isfahan Lake. So, OK... all day this huge snowstorm has been threatening to start. Distribution center is out across the freeway from the town proper. So here's our hero, right? She's a manager at the distribution center, lives in town, good midwestern town, Christmas tree in the middle of Meidan Avenue. She's working second shift this day. Her mom drops in for coffee and asks if she can take her down to the bakery to get some Danish, she'd drive herself but it's a couple towns over in... umm...<br>
<b>(b)</b>: — Århus!<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Sure, in Århus. I'd tell you what crazy way they say Århus there but I don't even know how to say it, so they're probably saying it wrong the same way I am.<br>
<b>(b)</b>: Nooo, Århus is the little Danish town, they're getting a little Danish from the little Danish bakery, they say it exactly right!<br>
<b>(a)</b>: ... Sure, they say it right, however that is. And she'd drive herself but, you know, she never feels safe on Route 12, especially since they put in that driveway for Tromsø High School, one of those kids is gonna pull out without looking one of these days! And the snow might blow in! So she says OK, she has a few hours before work. They go out and get in her PT Cruiser.<br>
<b>(b)</b>: Our hero!<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Not just any PT Cruiser, a <em>woody</em> PT Cruiser. It was her grandpa's last car, he kept it perfectly maintained and barely drove it. Right now it's hard to see the fake wood paneling through a layer of good old Illinois road grime but it still “runs good”. His old over-glasses sunglasses are still clipped to the visor, she wears 'em when the sun is low in the sky.<br>
<b>(b)</b> <i>(makes farting noise)</i>: Ooh, look, “You're the one that's from the midwest,” “I don't want gifts, they aren't efficient” <em>now</em> you're laying on the sentimental shit? Get the fuck out of here!<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Suit yourself, over-glasses sunglasses are a solid concept. Total 360° coverage! The old man knew how to keep the glare out of his eyes! So they go down to Århus. Her mom loved Århus and hated Tromsø. For her it was the opposite; Århus was the gym where she lost every time at volleyball and Tromsø was the ice cream shop she rode her bike to when she was finally old enough to go out on her own.<br>
<b>(b)</b>: ... not to mention the ice cream shop she smoked and drank and threw up behind, where she met her first boyfriend. He still lives in town and she passes by his house on long runs every now and then, they wave hi and sometimes she stops and stretches for a few minutes while they talk in his yard but they know that's all in the past, just memories. So they go into the bakery in Århus and her mom is smiling and chatting with the staff and loving her little trip to little Denmark while she's shrinking back, scanning for members of the staff about her age that might look like former high-school volleyball stars?<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Yeah, and as they're coming home the snow really starts to come down and she's just seething to herself, “If we had got the hell out of Århus sooner I wouldn't have had to drive in this shit! If I wreck Grandpa's car it's all Mom's fault!”<br>
<b>(b)</b>: “... and Grandma would have been like, ‘Told you so!’” Grandma and Grandpa here are on dad's side, this Grandma had got off on the wrong foot with Mom and never quite got over it.<br>
<b>(a)</b>: But she sighs and puts on her hazards and crawls all the way back to The Lake, which is what the locals call it when they can't be arsed to say, “iz-FAY-en Lake”. By the time she gets home the snow is really accumulating. She drops her mom at her house and says she'll bring her car over when she gets home from work. She'll walk home through the empty streets, which she likes, makes her feel free. She pulls into her driveway, goes in her garage, grabs her shovel, clears the sidewalk in front of her house, then gets a scoopful of salt from the salt bag and sprinkles it on the steps to her porch.<br>
<b>(b)</b>: I see we have ourselves a civic duty enthusiast over here!<br>
<b>(a)</b>: Then she looks out down the block, looks at her watch, and shovels out a few of her neighbors' sidewalks. She watches the snow fall down on the freshly-shoveled sidewalk, shakes her head, runs back to the garage, throws the shovel in, closes the garage, starts the car, backs out, takes two right turns out to Route 12 to get across the freeway. But when she gets to the overpass hill the car won't get up it. This road is just like this, it's a weirdly steep climb and you just can't get up it in the snow sometimes. She has snow chains... back at the house... from a road trip to the mountains years ago, never used. She lets the car slide back down the hill, carefully turns it around, pulls into the parking lot of a Subway, sticks her head in the restaurant and says, “Hey, is it alright if I leave my car here until the weather clears?”, and the kid at the register says, “Sure thing, ma'am,” —<br>
<b>(b)</b>: — I don't know where you got these ideas about midwestern politeness but the 1950s were 70 years ago<br>
<b>(a)</b>: And she runs out from the restaurant in her snow boots, up the hill, across the interchange, and a mile down the road to the distribution center, just on time. A few hours into work she notices a package addressed to Federal Way, Washington with a ZIP code starting “89”. Well, that can't possibly be right! She double-checks it and has a new, correct address label printed.<br>
<b>(b)</b>: So that's the story of how my... wonderful Christmas gift got here.<br>
<b>(a)</b>: That's about the size of it.<br>
<b>(b)</b>: Thanks entirely to people that don't even have names and towns in Illinois with crazy made-up names like Isfahan Lake, Tromsø, and Danville?<br>
<b>(a)</b>: <i>Homo Econonomicus</i> says worrying about that would be an inefficient use of our precious worrying resources!<br>Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-29031481034645980112020-10-28T22:54:00.002-07:002020-10-28T22:54:31.122-07:00Save the Constitution: Abolish the Senate<p>Maybe the first thing you think when you read, “Abolish the Senate,” is that this would be a radical change away from the government envisioned in the Constitution. Of course it would be a big change. But I think there's a more central and important Constitutional value that would be served by getting rid of it: the legislature makes the laws.</p>
<p>Ever notice how when the White House changes hands the strongest policy voices on the winning side of the aisle in Congress start looking for executive-branch positions? With the houses of Congress often set against each other it's hard for them to have any impact there. In charge of more unified executive agencies they can take the lead on policy and then, when they have to, get the issues they want before Congress. The people that stick around in Congress are the ones that specialize in whipping votes and using parlaimentary procedure for partisan advantage.</p>
<p>It's not only in line with Constitutional ideals that Congress should lead on policy, it would have good results. Congress holds a larger and fuller ideological gamut than any Presidential administration. We could get a wider range of ideas from there. An empowered and revitalized Congress might have a wider range of parties if alignment with Presidential politics wasn't so critical. We could see a broader range of compromises crafted to unite various factions that exist within and between parties. But we'd also get more stability. The makeup of Congress, even after a big swing election, doesn't change as much as the makeup of executive agencies after a Presidential election. Because it's made up of many little elections it represents all the people and interests in a fairly stable way.</p>
<p>So that's the body that should lead on policy: a strong Congress with one house. That means we need to get rid of a house. If we remove one of Congress' houses it should be the Senate. The one that's extremely unrepresentative and, honestly, truly obnoxious in its self-importance. I'm not going to go on about this — if you're not with me here you're not going to be with me on any of this :-).</p>
<p>One thing people seem to like about the Senate is that it gives a voice to concerns that would be drowned out in a representative body, where big cities would dominate. If we have a group that does this its powers should be more limited such that it doesn't blunt the legislative thrust of Congress too much. And it probably shouldn't be organized by state — really the power in the idea would be to raise up groups that cut across that relatively arbitrary geography. Maybe some seats could be reserved for proportional representation by party (as in many parlaiments), possibly with a formula that limits the number for the largest parties (which would be well represented in the more powerful House) to raise up smaller ones. Of course the smaller parties would have to get a bit more serious than they are today but they might rise to the challenge. Agricultural interests, which get strong but uneven representation in today's Senate, could be considered in a more balanced way. In any such body recognized tribes should certainly have seats, and so should any territory that isn't fully represented in Congress today. Maybe non-citizen residents could get some seats? Other racial and language groups might be worth considering, though the details would be hard to hammer out.</p>
<p>But the details aren't the most important thing. This isn't going to happen soon, and if it does eventually, I'm not going to lead it. Just trying to get all five of you that read this to think about the Senate. Its form and its power are written into the Constitution, but it might be eroding Constitutional values (at least the ones we value today). We should give a serious thought to abolishing it, to promote those values.</p>
<p><i>POSTSCRIPT: I tried to write this in a way that's neutral on current politics but it would be dishonest to ignore that abolishing the Senate and empowering the House would benefit my politics in the short-term. I think it's reasonable to believe this would be the case long-term. But my own politics aren't all I care about. It's very reasonable to disagree with my politics on many points, as well as my point of view on the Senate. I probably leaned harder into “Constitution Equals Good” thinking here than I really believe, but... hey, I'm American, I'm stuck with the rhetoric like all of us are. Oh, yeah, and anyone that actually knows about this stuff will clearly see that I don't. Because of that I tried to keep it short and sort of failed. Oh, well. At least I mostly stayed focused. There are many American political institutions that are bad and should be replaced with better ones for the good of democracy; this post is about one of them :-).</i></p>Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-72000406765958952452020-09-15T00:11:00.001-07:002020-09-15T00:19:36.646-07:00Mail-in voting: what to expect as you watch<p>I'm writing this for people I know that might experience an election with widespread mail-in voting for the first time in a couple months. I've been living in Washington, where most of our voting is done by mail, for 10 years. Local officials and local news in your area will have the most relevant information specific to your situation, especially on how to vote yourself. But I'm worried that newsrooms that are used to covering normal elections won't prepare you for how a largely mail-in election will go. And if you aren't ready for it you could be succeptible to harmful propaganda. So here are some things to expect as you <em>watch</em> the election.</p>
<p><strong>Results will roll in for weeks</strong></p>
<p>We're used to watching election results come in over the course of a few hours. With mail-in voting they'll come in over the course of a few weeks. Some places count early-arriving mail ballots before election day, so by election night a large fraction of votes will already be counted. Other places won't start counting until the day. In either case many ballots that were mailed and postmarked on time will be working their way through the mail for days after election day, and the full count might not be ready for a few weeks. <strong>That's normal, it's what you should expect</strong>. The count might be slowed down by COVID-related workplace issues, both within USPS and the election system. It might be slowed down by legal challenges or even political wrangling over which ballots should be counted (remember 2000?). It doesn't mean your local election officials or workers are malicious or incompetent.</p>
<p>I mean, your local election officials might be incompetent or even malicious! We have too many election officials trying to suppress votes in this country! But <strong>vote counts trickling up through mid-November isn't evidence of a problem</strong>, it's just how this kind of election works.</p>
<p>Oh, yeah, I said, “political wrangling over which ballots are counted.” That's going to happen in lots of places, especially places that aren't used to widespread mail-in voting. It won't be over on election night. Be ready to fight for your ballot, and your neighbors' ballots, to be counted, for weeks.</p>
<p><strong>Results may swing dramatically after election day</strong></p>
<p>Alright, so you know all about voter turnout. Every person decides whether and how to vote for their own reasons but in aggregate there are fairly predictable patterns for the voting <em>and turnout</em> patterns for different groups of people. Groups of voters whose turnout varies most from election to election <em>tend</em> to correlate with groups that swing left, so low-turnout elections tend to swing right and high-turnout elections tend to swing left (at least for recent US elections).</p>
<p>Similarly, in aggregate, different groups of people tend to vote at different times. Mail-in voting takes place over a very large time window, so these tendencies are exaggerated. So it's pretty common here in Washington for one candidate to hold a substantial lead on election night, only for their opponent to win resoundingly when all the ballots are counted. <strong>This kind of movement is normal. It is not evidence of a conspiracy. Anyone that says so is either ignorant or a liar, and in either case isn't worth listening to.</strong></p>
<p>In Washington late-voters tend to swing left, and left-wing candidates often see large post-election-day increases. If I had to guess, I'd expect that the same pattern would occur nationally. <em>However</em>, that expectation comes with some caveats:</p>
<ul>
<li>Donald Trump and his supporters broke a lot of pollsters' turnout models in 2016 (as did Brexit). Washington, and the Seattle area in particular, has some of the lowest levels of Trump support in the US. It wouldn't shock me to see more late-arriving right-wing votes elsewhere because Trump supporters break the timing model, too.</li>
<li>Washington voters, and Seattle voters in particular, tend to be pretty tuned-in and ideological, and our top-2 “jungle primary” system forces voters to decide on their overall top choice in most elections months in advance of the general. So I think we have fewer true “swing voters”, by the time of a general election, than a lot of other places, even in close elections. And I suspect true swing voters would tend to vote late. So there's another late-voting group that might be bigger nationally than in Washington.</li>
<li>If you have widespread mail-in <em>and</em> widespread in-person voting all bets are off. I don't know which groups of people will tend to vote in-person, nor whether in-person or mail-in ballots will suffer bigger delays. In fact I'd bet both those things will vary a lot place to place. Washington is almost all mail-in so I don't even have a baseline to go from here.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Exit polling is out the window</strong></p>
<p>Up here we're used to pollsters not bothering with us because we're not a swing state. At the local level we're used to being in the dark until the results come in. The whole thing with staying up and watching exit polls to try to get a jump on official results... it's not going to be a thing this year. Go to bed.</p>Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-63188793330785789922020-06-23T16:15:00.001-07:002020-06-23T16:15:08.386-07:00hey pheidippides f-f-f-friend?with a whole forty-eight hours' perspective on running a marathon alone in my neighborhood i'm still conflicted about it
<p>on one hand whatever gladness i have in having run the last lap if you can even call that running with all the stopping to stretch my cramping calf every couple blocks feels wrong since i didn't enjoy it and it didn't help anyone and it didn't make me better
<p>on the other hand in training i focused on different things than usual and that made my long runs more fun and less painful than usual which at least made me a little smarter and better
<p>did i have to do the bad thing to do the good thing
<p>the bad thing came later so maybe not but would i have done the good thing if i hadn't committed myself to the bad thing enough to actually do it even though i didn't want toAl Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-15322416625739596912019-09-16T03:12:00.001-07:002019-09-16T03:23:24.880-07:00Leaving Google<p>I probably should write some definitive words about why I left Google. I guess I'll do that here, on my lonely blog.
<p>Let's start with the short version. There are lots of things you could say about what a computer really <em>is</em>, about the meaning and purpose of computers. My favorite one, the one I find most inspiring, comes from Steve Jobs back in the '80s: “The computer is a bicycle for the mind.” I used to believe Google made more bicycles for more minds than anyone else. I don't believe that anymore.
<p><strong>That's it, this is the tl;dr line, you can all go home now.</strong> What follows is more words. More words from the guy that customized his Blogger stylesheet to get wider text so his paragraphs wouldn't look so long. More words from a guy that's said a few regrettable ones already.
<p>I put Jobs' remark in quotation marks above but it's more of a paraphrase. He said things like that at least a few different times and often phrased it in different ways. I imagine at the time he was saying it he biked places sometimes, or at least had done so in recent memory. A couple decades later he was a rich old crank that bought a new car every week or so, so that he could always be in the grace period where he didn't have to install permanent license plates.
<p>One of the other things you could say about the meaning and purpose of computers is that computers, like a lot of other technology, make people more efficient. The people that can make the most of this efficiency reap the most gains. Often existing powerful organizations are well positioned to make the most of technological efficiency; sometimes entrenched powers are the only ones that can do things. Sometimes upstarts do very well for some reason. Whatever that reason is, they then become powerful organizations that attribute their further successes to the same myths as the early ones. Google is like that.
<p>And that's fine. Google is full of the myth that it succeeds in 2019 because it's full of smart people that make great software. I don't know, I think most stuff Google does succeeds mostly because Google is big and has an established user base? I'm not an expert in this stuff, but... come on. A lot of people can look really smart when they have access to all the stuff Google has already built up. So it's not like they <em>aren't</em> full of smart people that make great software, and if they didn't they'd fall off pretty fast! That's just... whatever, it's fine, it makes people feel good about their work. Sometimes the exceptionalism is grating; that's not why I left.
<p>One of the funniest things in Google culture is the idea that Google is “data-driven”. Ridiculous! Google has made a lot of cool things throughout its history essentially as halo projects. They could do them because they were printing money selling search ads, and any eventual benefit to the bottom line was ultra-speculative. Some of them even worked!
<p>And that's fine. GMail was in one sense a flex: look how much storage we can just give away! We won't even put banner ads in your inbox! All you have to do is <i>log in</i> — and now people are logging in to Google. I don't know whether people tried to use “data” to estimate the ultimate value of that to Google but... how would they even? How could you estimate the value of something whose payoff depends on so many other unknown factors precisely enough to prioritize the work against other things you could be doing? It has to be an intuitive belief. Meanwhile Google+, with its explicit goals around driving logged-in usage, flopped famously. Another way to look at GMail is as the result of <a href="http://threevirtues.com/">laziness, impatience, and hubris</a>. “Webmail sucks! Configuring SMTP sucks about as much! Spam sucks <em>so</em> much! I could do better!” The laziness and impatience were in tune with the zeitgeist; the execution matched the hubris.
<p>You know, it's better than fine. Being data-driven is for robots. Be vision-driven! <em>Use</em> data to spread your vision! <em>Use</em> data to hone your vision! <em>Use</em> data to question your vision! But never let data grab the handlebars — the computer is the bicycle, <em>the mind</em> is the rider.
<p>I got to work on Google Maps for four years. I'm sort of proud of that. I think Google Maps is one of the coolest apps in software history. I'll never forget the first time I played around with it. It changed the way I saw the world! I'd already been the sort of person that was easily fascinated by studying maps because of how much you can discern about the logic of a place by studying maps. Here was one big, map of the whole world!
<p>This is probably the right place to say: sometimes thinking of the world through the lens of one big map misleads as much as it enlightens. That isn't why I left Google, or Maps, it's just a thing that's true: Google Maps can't be the only map. No single map can be the only map. Some people think about places differently than others, even in ways that contradict others. Some places, some institutions, work differently for some people than others. Like I said, Google Maps changed the way I saw the world. I could see all the places I might go running, crossing freely between towns, on and off of campus, through parks. But I didn't always acknowledge the perspective I had. Just randomly:
<ul>
<li>I remember once saying that essentially every place on the continent was connected by a network of pavement. My friend Heather challenged this as depending on a particular idea of what a “place” was, and I didn't really get it, but this was a pretty important point!
<li>Mercator projection! It's... a pretty bad way to draw maps of big parts of the world! It's a pretty practical way to draw city-scale maps in parts of Earth that have cities (for people that want north-up orientations)! It's definitely the <a href="https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html">worse-is-better</a> solution (“It is slightly better to be simple than correct”). Anyway Google Maps has probably made more people look at Mercator projections of big parts of the world than any other discernible thing in the history of maps? And now there's a 3-D mode... it still enforces north-up like a globe with an invisible stand you can't break free from. That's probably a reasonable choice! I just think we shouldn't forget it is a choice.
<li>In the first season of <i>Serial</i> the host explained the local term “strip” as a particular named place where you might go to buy or sell drugs. I bet some such strips are in more common parlance than many neighborhood designations that appear on Google Maps! I actually used this as a conversation-starter with colleagues sometimes but had a hard time getting the idea across.
<li>Of course an expansive view of the world showing near-total freedom of movement across political boundaries is not a reflection of reality for many people.
</ul>
<p>Again, these aren't reasons Google Maps is bad, they're reasons it can never be enough. We'll always need more ways to think about geography. We'll always need ways that a corporation will never give us. We'll always need ways that the software world is unlikely to give us (if you have an idea for something the software world is unlikely to give us, but that yet could use some software work, I may be able to help, with the caveat that I'm pretty useless generally; hit up my DMs or whatever).
<p>Google Maps has some “halo project” vibes, like GMail. At times it's been used to flex: way before I worked on Maps they, for a time, connected the continents in directions by instructing users to, “Swim across the ocean.” As with GMail, who could possibly compete with what Maps offered? A fast site with a cool UI and, with no need to immediately make money, no annoying ads?
<p>I guess that's one thing that feels properly sinister. Google at its best shows the world how to build really cool and useful stuff... that you couldn't actually build without the Google-sized money printing machine. And when you graft on the Google-sized big-data machine?
<p>I have some particular frustrations around the way Google Maps chases users and gathers data these days but it seems to be tied to a general idea that runs through the biggest companies in computing. We aren't about empowering users. Users aren't our partners. They're sources of data (as long as it's the data we want when we want it). Their attention is the battleground where we fight against the other big companies to stay at the front the longest.
<p>One of my particular frustrations has to do with driver distraction. I've always been uncomfortable with GPS screens in cars. I sometimes drive cars with GPS screens active on mounts around relay races and I find it distressing. There's a feeling when you're merging in traffic and monitoring a situation over your shoulder, then suddenly realize you haven't been keeping track of what's in front of you; for me, driving with a GPS screen often feels like that. Apps like Waze take this to another level, making driving something between a game and a social network.
<p>I can't stomach Google Maps following Waze down that road: actively prompting users for input on road and traffic conditions while they should be watching traffic ahead. People are, in general, deluded about their ability to multitask. That is, to divide their focus and switch between tasks without losing accuracy, and to manage distractions and prioritize the most important things. One of the reasons I did leave Google is that I was very disappointed by Google's direction on this, and by responses to my concerns about them, which relied on pure fantasies about people's ability to prioritize in the face of distraction. We supposedly had principles about distraction; they ended up as little more than footnotes when it was time to break them. That made me really angry.
<p>That loomed large for me but of course it was just one part of an overall change in how I saw Google and other big tech companies. The change in the overall picture is why it was a moment where I didn't want to be a part of Google, rather than a moment where I wanted to fix Google. Maybe fairly little of that change is really a change in what Google is or what it does. Certainly a lot of it is position: things that seemed cool as “betas” from small companies can look more oppressive from behemoths that are already heavily entangled in our lives. Some of it is experience: I didn't anticipate some of the ways software companies would change the world and I haven't liked some of the changes I thought I'd like. And some of it is certainly a change in how I see the world. I understand the significance of politics and power more, for instance.
<p>For now I just want to do things that are more straightforward. Maybe make some bicycles for some minds if I can.Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-12758757514801424522018-03-01T21:24:00.000-08:002018-03-01T21:25:02.971-08:00Creation“Ya know, as a musician sometimes you have to give up some stuff so you can do other stuff.”
<p>“Why? Because you're playing solo? What if you had a band? Or just... some time and an eight-track recorder?”
<p>“And a well of talent both broad and deep, and the ability to hold complexity in your mind, and to organize your thoughts so you don't have to hold all that complexity in there at once.”
<p>“Sure, why not?”
<p>“Some people have these things. It's not their own limitations they're up against, it's those of the audience. The audience doesn't get to listen as a band. We may talk about collective listening experiences, and sometimes there's something to them, but they aren't going to make people better at handling complexity in a consistent and sustained way. You can't get 'em in a groove and lead 'em off the beaten path at the same time.”
<p>“I don't know... that sounds more like a bad metaphor than a real limitation.”
<p>“I'm not saying you can't alternate between the two, just not at the same time.”
<p>“Meh, still don't buy it. You can listen to music, dance along, turn your head in surprise and delight, and keep dancing.”
<p>“Speak for yourself. Have you seen me dance?”
<p>“Uh... no?”
<p>“There's a reason for that.”Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-59549695763009152822017-11-18T20:43:00.000-08:002017-11-18T22:05:42.495-08:00Hydrants<p>“Dude, quit messing with that fire hydrant, there's a cop like right there!”
<p>“Alright, man, chill.”
<p>“What?!? Seriously, stop messing with it, we're gonna miss the start of the game!”
<p>“Man, fire hydrants are yellow.”
<p>“What?!?”
<p>“This is green.”
<p>“What?!?”
<p>“It's a municipal beer tap.”
<p>“What?!?”
<p>“This is what you get for not following local politics.”
<p>“What?!?”
<p>“So I just gotta... oh, crap, did I leave my hose adapter at that block party?”
<p>“What?!?”
<p>“Yeah, it was funny, I just ran into it on my way home —”
<p>“— That's not funny, dude, you should have stopped, someone could have died.”
<p>“Ha, ha, I have this guy's phone number but I can't remember his name. <em>Awk-ward!</em> He was obsessed with Sound Transit. Not super for it or against it or anything, just <em>obsessed</em>.”
<p>“Yeah, that's what you get for following local politics.”
<p>“So I guess I have to text this guy but not say his name.”
<p>“Maybe distract him with a question about mass transit governance.”
<p>“Ugh, anyway, I'll worry about that later, we're gonna miss the start of the game.”
<p>“So what sort of beer comes out of these things anyway?”
<p>“They're currently rotating through some sours.”
<p>“I guess they had to find <em>some</em> place for all that sour beer when 2015 ended two years ago.”
<p>“Uh, sours are still a thing.”
<p>“OK, sure, so the proper joke would have been, ‘What do you get when you put literally any beer in an underground tank and wait for some weirdo to come along with a beer hose?’”
<p>“People don't talk about them like they've discovered something new anymore, which, let's be honest, by 2015 would have been shamefully late for any set of yuppies outside tech, but yeah, they're on track to blow up in the mainstream in 2018.”
<p>“Ugh.”
<p>“So, uh, remember that when your parents call you sloppy drunk from their vacation to Kansas City, Kansas next summer at four in the afternoon and ask if they have sour beers in Seattle, because you're somehow the coolest person they know.”
<p>“I mean, my parents are teetotalers, but you're still the worst.”
<p>“If you don't like sours there's a special election in March. It's the municipal beer tap selection... what color to paint the Space Needle... and the primary for City Council <a href="http://butnottoohard.blogspot.com/2015/07/2015-voting-guide-for-seattle-techies.html">position ten</a> or something.”
<p>“Why does everything have to be the worst?”Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-89603386262829453622017-07-12T19:51:00.000-07:002017-07-12T19:51:04.493-07:00Why my blog posts are disappearing!I am “archiving” (effectively deleting) all posts on this blog before some arbitrary time, maybe 2014 or so, except ones I happen to know are linked from other places. If there's something you're looking for (there probably isn't, none of this is exactly noteworthy) ask me and I'll make it visible (if I like you).Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-48262297151648233422017-07-03T00:04:00.003-07:002017-07-03T00:04:53.691-07:00Europe Retrospective: LuxembourgI have flown across the Atlantic six times (three times each way). Five of the six have been on the Delta flight between Seattle and Amsterdam. As of the start of this trip I had never been in Amsterdam outside the airport, which put Amsterdam, for me, in a category with Las Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Dallas. I would get a little time in Amsterdam later, but on the way in I was just connecting through to Luxembourg.
<p>In Luxembourg my main purpose was visiting John and Victoria, and resting up for the marathon. I had a fun visit with them, shopping around for grills and outdoor furniture, cooking and eating, hanging out and reading in parks, etc. I didn't do as much sightseeing as I hoped due to catching a cold, but did make it out to Trier, which is just spectacular for having such a collection of historic buildings in such a compact area.
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<p style="text-align: center">A model of the remnants of Trier's fortifications, in front of the fortifications.</p>
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<p style="text-align: center">The fortifications from the other side.</p>
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<p style="text-align: center">Various angles of the stunning main square of Trier.</p>
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<p style="text-align: center">A baroque palace joined to an older church — certainly a political statement, perhaps not so different from some of today's regarding the provenance and justification of great accumulated wealth. Not the sort I'm inclined to agree with.</p>
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<p style="text-align: center">Ruins of Trier's Roman baths.</p>
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<p style="text-align: center">Trier's Roman amphitheatre.</p>
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<p style="text-align: center">This would have to be a Gothic church, but I don't recall which exactly.</p>
<p>The marathon was a bust; between a fever I was still fighting off, very hot temperatures persisting through the race start, and being stuck out in the sun with no water for almost two hours before the start, I really had no chance to make the whole distance. I dropped off my goal pace about 10 kilometers in and dropped out completely before the halfway mark. At least I got to run some later parts of the course on easy runs other days. I felt like a cheater going in for the massage and spa treatment in Mondorf the day after <em>not</em> running a marathon (thanks, Dad!), but experiencing a sauna for the first time was worth the guilt. John ran as part of a marathon relay team, and he finished his leg, so he earned his massage and saunas properly. On the way we passed by Schengen, where the famous European open-borders agreement was worked out!
<p>On my last day in Luxembourg John took me on a tour of Luxembourg's “Valley of the Seven Castles”. This is one of these Seattle-Luxembourg connections. People sometimes say Seattle was built on seven hills (an analogy to Rome), but however you count the hills you always wind up with more or less than seven, never seven exactly. I think the Valley of the Seven Castles is similar, though I could be wrong (I don't know Luxembourgish castles nearly as well as Seattle hills).
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<p style="text-align: center">These are from a little old ruin near Käerch.</p>
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<p style="text-align: center">This one, near Septfontaines, was a little tricky to get to. It looks like it's been inhabited recently, with what appears to be a modern driveway on part of the grounds!</p>
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<p style="text-align: center">The castle at Ansembourg features an impressive garden.</p>
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<p style="text-align: center">Hollenfels' castle has a hostel next to it!</p>
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<p style="text-align: center">This castle in Vianden can be visited, but was closed when we showed up.</p>
<p>In addition to all these castles we got a peek at the current Grand-Ducal palace. John knew we were in the area and managed to find the closest accessible vantage by driving around. As when I first moved to Seattle and spent several weeks going on runs trying to find Kerry Park, looking at a map would have been cheating. The Dimonds take fair-play seriously... I think we were raised to appreciate a good challenge. Anyhow, Luxembourg is a nice place to visit if you have good hosts, and I had the best! Next stop, Prague!Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-49920863122263790972017-06-20T02:21:00.000-07:002017-06-20T02:21:30.123-07:00The bottle says, “SPF 50,” but we have to take into account that France is a Metric country. SPF, of course, is a unit-less number. Metric unit-less scalar numbers are worth roughly 1.4 times their Imperial counterparts. Now you might be tempted to cube this number to get the conversion factor because sunscreen is a liquid, three-dimensional. But, in fact, the number refers to the light absorption properties of the skin. The skin's surface-area is a two-dimensional quantity (measured in square-meters or square-feet), but its exposure of light is measured <em>per</em>-unit of area, so the conversion factor is the <em>inverse</em>-square of 1.4, which is a little more than a half. So this sunscreen is about SPF 25, by American standards.
<p>If you think that's bad, it gets much more confusing in Britain, which is mostly on the Metric system except for grumpy old people and in matters of alcohol. Grumpy old people don't buy a lot of sunscreen, but if you've had a couple pints (which are of course different from American pints), you might have to take this into consideration. In this case there may be a distinction based on the length of the foot of the reigning monarch. In the 19th Century, as Dickens writes in <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i>, the King of England had a <em>square</em> jaw, so the ratio of his foot size to the standard foot was introduced <em>squared</em>. This was a serious inconvenience when buying sunscreen in these days, when people really had a whole lot else to worry about. The resulting epidemic of sunburn precipitated the tragic plot of Dickens' great novel, which is remembered as a rallying cry in the movement to adopt the Metric system in Britain. Ironically, when this finally happened, sunscreen applied while drunk retained this annoying conversion. Fortunately the monarch from then through today, Elizabeth II, has more of a round jaw, so though her feet are shorter than a foot, they just round up to a foot and the conversion is moot. So Americans and Europeans alike can consider SPF numbers in Britain exactly as they're accustomed to in their own countries.
<p><span style="font-size:50%">But if you're from Australia you have to turn the bottle upside-down before reading.</span>Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-66503332540212600142017-06-05T12:53:00.001-07:002017-06-05T12:53:51.985-07:00The Thing(s) with Bitcoin<p>Alright, <i>The Guardian</i>! <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/04/forget-far-right-populism-crypto-anarchists-are-the-new-masters-internet-politics">Y'all were just at Paralelní Polis in Prague</a>! I was, too! They really will sell you coffee for Bitcoins, and only for Bitcoins!
<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1pWSyfePoPiEuPxQ3kgwbOh6OoA5pokP6vfxs4V_p5CBuF7us4vAPjNoGWb1Xj9_aETbbx7FS1nZ6J5wQiyv_NDuZoU7bUbTRtZSA3Ey-OoawHfM0xB2Hzd3q2RLjAU4vNz2-/s1600/paralelni_polis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1pWSyfePoPiEuPxQ3kgwbOh6OoA5pokP6vfxs4V_p5CBuF7us4vAPjNoGWb1Xj9_aETbbx7FS1nZ6J5wQiyv_NDuZoU7bUbTRtZSA3Ey-OoawHfM0xB2Hzd3q2RLjAU4vNz2-/s1600/paralelni_polis.jpg" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" width="80%"/></a></div>
<p>And you got a Bitcoin wallet on a card and started scanning a QR code, printed therein, on machines in order to buy stuff! In the same room as people that walk around in facemasks in response to the combination of ubiquitous surveillance and various improvements in computing bandwidth (including, but not limited to, facial-recognition), which could otherwise allow them to be tracked literally everywhere! That's a bit ironic: ubiquitous surveillance is related to one of the reasons a Bitcoin wallet-card is not such a great idea. So here's a counterpoint to the <i>Guardian</i> piece: why Bitcoin <em>isn't</em> going to directly replace the Koruna (or Euro, or any of the various Dollars)... ever.
<p><b>Bitcoin's security is rather unforgiving as regards personal security.</b> A Bitcoin wallet-card has two QR codes (in case you don't know, a QR code is essentially a 2-D barcode) on it, each of which is used to access your wallet. One gives the necessary information for anyone (with the right software and an Internet connection) to give you Bitcoins. The other gives the necessary information for anyone to take your Bitcoins. Obviously, to buy a coffee you need to show the side that lets anyone take your Bitcoins. So you'd better trust your café! On the surface this is no worse than swiping a debit card. But there's a key difference: the ability to charge people's debit (and credit) cards is gated by payment networks that can revoke the access of scammers. Not so much with Bitcoin: the software is open-source. In order to counter fraud, institutions basically similar to the credit-card payment networks would have to form within the Bitcoin ecosystem. Anyway, once the Bitcoins are taken there's probably no way to get them back... except <em>possibly</em> by involving the old fuddy-duddy legal system (i.e. by convincing the state to pursue a case against your adversary, backed by the physical force of the police), in which case you're not much of a crypto-anarchist, are you? Also, the state, knowing that one of the major reasons to use crypto-currency over state-backed currency is avoiding regulations and taxes, may not be so eager to help you out.
<p>Of course, in the age of ubiquitous surveillance, <em>anyone operating a camera that sees your QR code could instantly empty your account</em>! This is the ironic part of the juxtaposition of wallet-cards and facemasks; people are worried about tracking via facial recognition — QR codes are <em>much</em> easier to recognize and read than faces! They were literally designed to be easy for computers to recognize and read! I severely doubt that the people wearing facemasks walk around with wallet-cards, at least not ones representing wallets with any real value in them.
<p>One apparent way around this (I just thought of this off the top of my head, so either people are already doing it or it's wrong) is to keep your savings in one wallet, with no associated card, and transfer small amounts of money to a “holding” wallet to make routine transactions. All the modes of operation I can think of would require consumers to have mobile phones with good Internet connections in order to buy anything. But then... you'd better trust the people writing these apps! Generally I don't think people are very good at figuring out what or whom to trust, and with scams being very simple to do and hard to protect against, scammers will absolutely savage the less techno-literate for years.
<p>The next big thing I have against Bitcoin is that <b>crypto-currency is, economically, a new form of precious-metal-based currency</b>, and hardly anyone thinks that's a good idea anymore. There is a finite amount of Bitcoins, which is determined by hard math. Well, there's also a (practically) finite amount of gold (on Earth, in the short-term), which is determined by hard geology. <b>The gold standard, as a basis for practical currency, was terrible</b>. When gold appears set to appreciate in value, as when there isn't much new gold being mined but the economy is growing, people hoard it instead of investing or loaning it out. An economy where there's no better investment than holding cash is an economy in trouble. Well, Bitcoin has certainly appreciated (exemplified by the article's cited prices for coffee), and if it has any prospects as a real currency it will only appreciate more!
<p>Of course, humanity has plenty of experience with currencies backed by geology, so we've been there before. And there's a response: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_silver">try a different metal</a>. The Free Silver movement wasn't successful, but other currency changes have been. The institutions you'd need to convince to switch to a different crypto-currency are more diffuse than governments and have different interests. And, of course, people have traded different metals, pressed directly into coins, before (names like “dollar”, “dime”, and “pound” originated with silver coins; “crown”, like the Czech Koruna, originated with gold coins). But then people ended up relying on governments to set standards. Of course, people didn't want to have to figure out which shops accepted gold, silver, or copper, but they were also bad at detecting counterfeit money, and governments were in the position to scare counterfeiters with threats of heavy punishment.
<p>And this places a lot of power in the hands of governments, which can use it for bad things. Today some people claim that the Czech government is, under the influence of big business (and politicians with direct big-business interests), implementing regulations aimed at excessively burdening small businesses to benefit larger ones. I don't know enough to evaluate the claim, but if these regulations are onerous enough, they may exceed the difficulties of stepping outside mainstream payment systems. Therefore the possibility of everyday Bitcoin use, even if only by knowledgeable and motivated people, could act as a check on certain kinds of government overreach.
<p>The other opportunity for Bitcoin, in some sense, is by analogy the Linux story. I didn't come up with this, I heard it on the radio somewhere. The “year of Linux on the Desktop” never really came, not as its advocates envisioned, but as the importance of “The Desktop” has receded, Linux has taken over servers and mobile devices. Similarly, Bitcoin is backed by some cool software that might be very important, in finance and elsewhere, in the near future, even if everyday Bitcoin use never takes off much. But, as with the rise of Linux, it may largely occur under the control of big businesses (including startups that become behemoths) and governments, not anarchist hackers. If this happens, it may bring about some changes to the cultures of these institutions, but I'd guess only minor, adaptive changes, not fundamental ones. That is, I don't think we're headed for the freewheeling world of <em>Snow Crash</em>.Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-69258312672968788132017-05-18T22:49:00.000-07:002017-05-18T23:04:09.608-07:00Slytherin Software Engineering: Checked Exceptions, Java 8 Streams, and you!There's nothing quite so <a href="http://emilymcgovern.com/category/my-life-as-a-background-slytherin/">Slytherin</a> in software as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming">functional programming</a>. A functional program is not a heroic quest to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BpgAHBZgec">impose order on the chaos of memory</a>, but the evaluation of elegant mathematical and logical expressions, over data structures that can never change, with no side-effects. Is all as it ever was? Yes. Our machines are not as perfect as our ideas, but we use compilers to keep the (vaguely dirty) world of processors, instructions, and memory separate from our timeless forms. Additionally there's a bit of the esoteric: pure functional programming disallows the most basic elements of the imperative style that most people learn first, data structures like arrays and control-flow ideas like iteration. This lends itself to uniform syntax with meaning differentiated by position and hierarchy, not <a href="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/old/attic/perl/one-liner.html">ugly</a> flat structures with wide varieties of (plucky?) characters. This is serious Slytherin stuff, right here.
<p>Alas, sometimes even a Slytherin must code in Java. Java's endemic flaw is that it never has enough features; in this it is infinitely preferable to, say, <a href="http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/defective.html">C++</a>, which always has too many! The consequence of this flaw is that we must write lots of redundancies. A redundancy is a statement that offers no possibility for expression, but that we must write anyway. This is drudgery, mere toil, not befitting our high nature! Java has long supported some functional idioms and even anonymous classes, but using them was an exercise in managing redundant boilerplate. Java 7 helped clear some Generics-related boilerplate, but Java 8's compact <i>lambda</i> expressions and Streams API finally made functional expressions look good on the page.
<p>There's just one problem: what if your <i>lambda</i> expression calls some function that <code>throws</code> a checked exception? Streams methods won't accept such a <i>lambda</i>! This sort of problem predates Java's <i>lambda</i>s and Streams, but now that functional idioms are good-looking enough to use it's a problem worth re-examining. So let's consider the possibilities.
<p><b>You could handle the exception</b>. Yeah, right. In your nice, pithy <i>lambda</i>? What are you, a Hufflepuff? You didn't throw that exception, it's not your responsibility. <em>Let someone else handle it</em>.
<p><b>You could catch it, wrap it in <code>RuntimeException</code>, and throw that</b>. You'd do that with a higher-order function, obviously. The downside to this is that by wrapping the checked exception you <em>obscure its true nature</em> to callers. That's a red flag right there (we obviously prefer green ones). Another core Slytherin value this violates is <em>reciprocity</em>. You had to deal with the annoyance of a checked exception and <em>it's your right</em> to propagate this annoyance up the call stack. But to force the caller to check arbitrary levels of <code>getCause()</code> and try to guess the intentions of the various wrapping layers? I'm not going to lecture you about fairness or the social contract, but think of the possible consequences: your caller could denounce your method for being imprecise. You don't want that reputation. It's just this fear that makes us civilized; do heed it.
<p><b>You could wrap the exception to get it through the Streams expression, then catch it outside and unwrap it for the caller</b>. For this you need a more specific type than <code>RuntimeException</code>, one that is only used for this purpose — if you wouldn't make your caller guess at the meaning of a caught <code>RuntimeException</code> you certainly shouldn't have to do it. This is the Golden Rule of Entitlement shared by all Slytherins, in case you were already developing a habit of skipping class by Kindergarten. So you declare such a type along with your function-wrapper and take care to use it consistently. But now your aesthetic is starting to slip. I once had such code reviewed by a <a href="http://emilymcgovern.com/2017/05/07/slytherin55/">Ravenclaw</a> that commented, “That's an awful lot of control-flow just to avoid a <code>for</code> loop.” I could only sulk, “And an awful lot of type-names just to avoid a builder,” and take my laptop and cognac into the stairwell to rewrite the whole module, newly enlightened to the futility of striving for beauty, for unity of expression and purpose. Never have your code reviewed by a Ravenclaw.
<p>It turns out that the best way, for a Slytherin, was invented in 2009. <b><a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/javaposse@googlegroups.com/msg05984.html">Do the <code>sneakyThrow</code></a></b>. Like it just by the sound of the name? I thought you might. You still have to wrap your <i>lambda</i> expression, but you don't need an extra try-catch block around the Streams expression, and the exception that comes out is exactly the type that was thrown. All you did was abuse Generics so you could make an unchecked cast and deliberately make that cast incorrectly to an unchecked type<a href="#f1" name="t1"><sup>1</sup></a> to fool the complier's static exception-type checks — <em>the ends justify the means</em>. Now you can put a (correct) <code>throws</code> declaration on your method, tie it up in a nice little bow, and laugh as the compiler warns you about it: how naïve it is, how little it knows of the dark arts.
<p>You could also leave the <code>throws</code> declaration off and lift the burden of checked-exception handling from your caller. This could have real consequences: there are exception-handling schemes out there that rely on the methods they invoke to honor their declarations. Some Slytherins would say that the weakness of those that trust in the honor of others is their own fault, that we should not be blamed for doing what we must. I mean, it's just code, so do whatever, <em>but don't be a douchebag about stuff that really matters, OK?</em>
<hr>
<p><a name="f1"></a><sup>1</sup> Two different meanings of “unchecked” in one sentence... oh, dear... <a href="#t1">↵</a>Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-82128559813269172262017-05-06T15:36:00.000-07:002017-05-06T17:51:25.618-07:00Should a word have two meanings? What the fuck for?<p>When first I sat at the table I took all the cards at face value. It was bad enough when they gave me directions according to where the old post office used to be. Worse when I arrived there with a package to mail. “And where should I take this, the hospital?”<br>
“Only if it's for a patient, dear.” She took a drag, stamped out her cigarette on the curb, and walked back into the bookstore.
<p>In the town square stood a statue of a man in a military coat and cap, striding forward with anger in his face. “A civic or national hero?”<br>
“Why, no. He led a revolution for a country that no longer exists in a land that, though it's a lot like ours, still seems a world away.”<br>
“Then, what, he was an exponent of our ideals?”<br>
“Well, I can't speak for everyone, but not mine. His professed ideology ridiculed political and personal freedoms from the first. When he held power he indeed suppressed these and others besides, and used racist oppression as a tool to consolidate political support. This came to be a hallmark of his country and its successors, though of course this is hardly unique in the world.”<br>
“Then why should we keep his statue here?” The plaque below mentioned something about its artistic significance. It had been pulled from a scrap heap after the war.
<p>A bar off the square had its own statue outside. A person holding a glass, with a motorized arm lifting the glass to drink and lowering it back down, over and over again, forever. A sticker on the door read, “Register to vote here.” Inside a drinker slapped his arm around me. He was, it turned out, in this strange city, from my home town, and that's one of our local pastimes: getting black-out drunk and hugging eachother. That's one of the reasons I left. He raised his glass and toasted a candidate for local office whose speeches were false fiction (fiction is no different from fact or prophecy, it can be false but it isn't always). I wasn't going to change his mind.
<p>He had a landscaping practice. His best customer was always traveling for business but kept a house in a post-bohemian neighborhood up the hill from the square. He was taking classes for an Associate's Degree but was struggling with math requirements. I met an accountant once that said she never liked math, and was never good at it. Then she wondered aloud why she'd gone into accountancy! Anyway, eventually he asked me what I did for work and I didn't have a quick deflecting lie ready and it was like he knew. I have lots of quick lies ready for when my colleagues ask me about my personal life, but not for that, because they all know what I do for work! He said he'd never been so close to someone he wanted to punch in the face.
<p>He lived a couple dozen miles south of town. Past the shipping port and the huge railyard that spreads out from a massive freight beltway, hidden to highway maps but imposing on the ground, in a glacial valley among factories and warehouses. He'd parked blocks away on a side street to avoid the specter of crime on the main drag. He was frighteningly drunk. Before my work came up and before punching-in-the-face came up he'd been laughing at my expense, or at the expense of the act I put on. Many of my lies and embellishments are self-deprecating, and I was dressed ridiculously; punch up or punch in, that's comedy. Now his sarcastic disgust was getting angrier. “I bet you take <em>public transportation</em>!” he sputtered. I didn't mention my bike locked up outside. I guessed at the sort of route he might take out to the freeway and made a mental note of streets to avoid on my way home.Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-13126090426391285562017-04-29T13:05:00.001-07:002017-04-29T13:05:34.315-07:00Current mood: 2001<p>It is 2001 again (or maybe 2003):
<ul>
<li>Mass protests have returned to mainstream consciousness
<li>I am extremely “single”
<li>I've messed up my body by running too fast
<li>Irony's dead now, for real this time
</ul>
<p>Because it is 2001 again, I am learning to play every song on (Radiohead's classic electronic album) <i>Kid A</i> as an acoustic-guitar strum-along. Back then I worked out several of them on piano, and some of them really are a lot easier on piano, but I'm being stubborn and sticking to guitar. Also I didn't really know how to play piano back then and I <i>really</i> don't know how to play piano now.Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-90001103575482040372017-04-23T13:56:00.000-07:002017-04-23T14:21:46.489-07:00Why am I writing about Juicero?There are just so many angles to this perfect exemplar of human silliness ca. 2017 (this is where I'd find a way to insert the phrase “late capitalism” if I was<a href="#f1" name="t1"><sup>1</sup></a> a Marxist but I'm not a Marxist; adjust per your politics).
<ul>
<li>Juicero is an Internet-connected “juicer” that squeezes bags of pre-chopped ingredients (sold separately) until juice comes out. You might ask what you need the Internet connectivity for, and the answer is, “Nothing.” <strong>Yet Juicero needs Internet connectivity. Not the juicer itself but the concept of such a juicer.</strong> Juicing is a dumb, overblown fad. The health benefits are dubious, and juice you buy in bottles or frozen cans is perfectly adequate — good enough to tide you over between monthly trips to that swanky juice bar in your town, if you're into that sort of thing. Only by the power of rapid, global, peer-to-peer human connection, <em>only by the Internet</em>, can a bunch of sparsely-distributed juice fanatics congeal into a “community”, with fresh-pressed juice becoming such a large part of their identity that they can be convinced they need this.
<p>Juicero <em>the venture-capital pitch</em> also needs Internet connectivity for a couple reasons, which only matter to a user in that they allow Juicero to exist:
<ul>
<li>DRM<a href="#f2" name="t2"><sup>2</sup></a>: ensuring that only authorized Juicero juice may be juiced by a Juicero juicer<a href="#f3" name="t3"><sup>3</sup></a>. In order to get/stay rich Juicero's founders need to be able to profit on initial sales of the machine and on continued sales of bags of chopped fruit.
<ul>
<li>The DRM angle includes a thin pretense of user benefit: that the machine could warn users of expired or recalled packets. I don't know, maybe you could have an online profile where you collected <a href="http://emilymcgovern.com/category/my-life-as-a-background-slytherin/">badges</a> for your impressive juicing accomplishments. Whether or not you'd actually use any of that, none of it is a feature <em>for the user</em> — it's all there to make the company's life better, not yours.
</ul>
<li>Internet connectivity makes it a “tech” product, suitable to be pitched to “tech” investors. “Tech”, economically, means that you're using technological novelty to stay ahead of competition, thereby keeping profit margins high<a href="#f4" name="t4"><sup>4</sup></a>. So there's more silly money in “tech” than in the food and beverage sector, and it's silly-arrogant money <em>that believes it can understand all the other sectors better than the established money already in them</em>.
</ul>
<br><!-- Phew -->
<li>As much as Juicero is riffing on a dumb, overblown fad to try to become a dumb, overblown fad in its own right, <strong>hating on Juicero is also a dumb, overblown fad</strong>. There's actually a product here. It's similar to the whole Keurig coffee maker thing, which has certainly taken off. Coffee from a Keurig tastes better than instant coffee from powder or crystals; the prep and clean-up is much easier than other home-brewing methods where you have to deal with grounds. On a per-serving basis it's more expensive than other home-brewing methods but cheaper than going to a cafe. On the Juicero side there's something about some <a href="https://medium.com/@Juicero/a-note-from-juiceros-new-ceo-cb23a1462b03">frazzled dad</a>, you get the point.
<p><ul>
<li>So about Keurig, I guess they're having trouble dealing with competitors making “cups” compatible with their machines, undercutting them on price, and killing their profit margins. Hence Juicero's need for DRM from the outset, hence their Internet-connected concept.
<li>The “easy” clean-up associated with Keurig machines has an associated environmental cost. A discarded, used Keurig cup contains plastic, aluminum, and organic matter all in a tight package, making it hard to recycle or compost, even though the materials in isolation are pretty well suited to recycling or compost. A Juicero bag must be quite similar. There's the outer material of the bag, strong enough to hold under the pressure of the machine. There's some kind of filter at the bottom of the bag, where the juice comes out — if that was built into the machine it would require regular cleaning, so it must be built into the bag. And there's the organic matter, the fibrous remains of the squeezed-out fruit.
<ul>
<li>When I make coffee at home I use a French press, and I can attest that coffee grounds are annoying, like any other damp organic kitchen waste. When I was renting the first floor of a house with a yard I could just walk out in my PJs and sandals and dump the grounds under some plants that the Internet said would appreciate having coffee grounds dumped on them. Now I toss them in a moldy compost bin for a couple days until the stink becomes unbearable, then take that bin down three flights of stairs to the bigger, moldier compost bin on the parking level of my building. Then I have to take a shower to wash the fruit flies out of my hair.
<ul>
<li>Point is, the inability to compost the coffee grounds and juice waste is, perversely, a feature.
<li>“Why don't you just shave your head, Al?” I did that, once, because all my cross-country teammates did it for the state meet my senior year. My head is not shaped right. It looked ridiculous, even more ridiculous than shaved heads usually look.
</ul>
</ul>
<li>So you can squeeze a Juicero bag with your hands. So, what? I'm sure you can strategically poke holes in a K-cup and pour hot water over it just the right way and end up with coffee. Who would actually do that? Not the “frazzled dad” on his way out to dad it up at some dad thing. Not the customers in the waiting room at the vet's office<a href="#f5" name="t5"><sup>5</sup></a>. Not the waiter, hurrying-up-and-waiting like 10 tables, and this guy is going to regret that 3:00 PM coffee order at 3:00 AM, but the customer is always right...
<ul>
<li>The workout you get from squeezing the Juicero bag with your hands probably has more health benefits than the juice. The problem is that as you develop strength you can only do more reps by drinking more and more juice, confusing the question of what's really responsible for your newly buff forearms...
</ul>
</ul>
</ul>
<hr>
<p><a name="f1"></a><sup>1</sup> This is where I'd use the subjunctive voice if I was the sort of person that used the subjunctive voice in English... <a href="#t1">↵</a>
<p><a name="f2"></a><sup>2</sup> DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. Like many software dorks of my age, when I was younger I ranted a lot about DRM in software because it represented extra complexity toward the end of making products less useful for users. Like many software dorks of my age I've mellowed on this subject. Anyway, computing models have shifted and more important work is done server-side (“in the cloud”), where big companies naturally have control of the data and the rights. Instead of seeing further erosion in users' rights to use data they possess, we've seen the erosion of users' possession of that data, often even what they'd call “their own” data. However the legal arrangements have or haven't changed, “Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” and it's also nine-tenths of practical power, power that the big companies in charge of the cloud wield mostly for their own benefit. <em>Oh, right, the point that I should be getting to</em>. Now there's DRM in a juicer that I'd never own, and I'm distinctly un-mellowed about it. I guess the mellowing wasn't about age, but just about what I was accustomed to. Humans are pretty good at adjusting themselves to their conditions. <a href="#t2">↵</a>
<p><a name="f3"></a><sup>3</sup> It's really hard for me to keep typing, “Juice,” instead of, “<a href="https://github.com/google/guice">Guice</a>.” Just thought you should know. <a href="#t3">↵</a>
<p><a name="f4"></a><sup>4</sup> Remember when I said I wasn't a Marxist? Well I have a very thin understanding of competition and profit margins that mostly comes from my observations of the tech industry and what I remember from the chapters of <i>Das Kapital</i> I managed to get through. <a href="#t4">↵</a>
<p><a name="f5"></a><sup>5</sup> My vet's office does have a Keurig machine in the waiting area. <a href="#t5">↵</a>Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-69753046151568306842017-04-22T17:15:00.000-07:002017-04-22T17:15:12.625-07:00Humility / AudacityI thought about making a poster for the Seattle March for Science today, then didn't, because I figured there would be lots of posters, and I'm not that good at slogans or visual art, better at long-winded explanations of stuff, so probably other posters would be more worthy of people's attention. Indeed, there were lots of clever posters there and I didn't take any pictures of them because I'm not good at remembering to take pictures. So instead I'm writing a blog post about the poster I maybe should have made. It would have had just two words: “HUMILITY” across the top and “AUDACITY” across the bottom.
<p>I'm probably missing a lot of the words for this, having not studied history nor philosophy of science in any depth, being just some guy that does software and reads stuff... so this is going to be a pretty square and incomplete account of things... so maybe you think about science as an institution, or as a practice. It's an institution made of people, a practice performed by people. We often fail to live up to our best ideals, but they're still our ideals (cf. the USA). Humility in particular would be good to highlight at this sort of event, both to and from the crowd.
<p>I didn't see either of my words anywhere. That's fine. I did see a “Make America Care Again” sign, which was the first MAGA riff I've ever liked.Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-6645693032822757432017-04-18T02:03:00.001-07:002017-04-18T02:03:24.791-07:00Cold Take: SerialI finally listened to <a href="https://serialpodcast.org/season-one"><i>Serial</i></a>, a few years late now. One of the big things I got out of it is that I don't want to talk about “reasonable doubt” in a case where I'm not on the jury.
<p>To talk about reasonable doubt is to implicitly question the jury's decision. It seems unfair to do that after listening to a podcast about a trial. I didn't see the whole trial! And I saw a lot of things that weren't in the trial, which were presented <em>because</em> they might indicate the wrong verdict was reached.
<p>But even if I had watched a video of the whole trial and nothing else... both sides in any jury trial prepare arguments to convince the particular jury in the courtroom. In this case that meant a majority-black jury from Baltimore; the podcast audience is a global audience of NPR listeners. There's a whole episode of the podcast called <i>The Deal with Jay</i>, Jay being the prosecution's star witness, where host Sarah Koenig asks, “What's the deal with Jay?” She was never quite sure what to make of him, the inconsistencies in his story, or the lies and evasions he gave before admitting his role in the crime and testifying for the prosecution. So in this episode she talked with a juror, Stella Armstrong, about how <em>she</em> understood Jay. Stella explained, “We all have somebody in our life like that, you know, that you may know, a cousin or a relative, who, if something goes wrong, you think you can call to help you.“ The implication was that “something” was something outside the law. In this case Jay testified that Adnan, the defendant, asked him to help him cover up a murder he committed. Sarah replied that she didn't know anyone like that.
<p>OK, I don't think I know someone like that either. Forget covering up a murder — if I commit a murder (I will try very hard not to commit a murder!) and ask you to help cover it up, don't mess around with that, slap me in the face and drag me out to face justice! But for stuff that isn't so grave... I don't really know who I'd call off the top of my head. Most of the people I'd call for advice would probably say stuff like, “Don't do anything stupid.” Some of that is a mark of privilege, that the law generally works for people like me (I've <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jaywalking-while-black-video-shows-cop-slamming-pedestrian-ground-n745446">jaywalked</a> as much as anyone...). But this trial wasn't put on for myself, Sarah Koenig, and a jury of NPR listeners. If it had been, both the prosecution and defense would have had to present somewhat different cases!
<p>So for me, in no way am I in the position of someone asked to do what the jury is doing. I'm listening to a podcast. I just speculate about stuff.Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-68428410017364012122017-03-14T01:10:00.002-07:002017-03-14T01:10:51.044-07:00Just because I'm tired of arguing with people about dumb things...... I guess I have to state a moral philosophy of bad form and annoyance.
<p>1. There are individual actions and there are collective actions. They are different.
<p>2. Some individual actions have terrible results when performed often by many people. Often, here, these actions are the result of many individual decisions made in self-interest, and the result does not resemble what we'd choose collectively. Often the harm can be significantly reduced if those individual actions are simply done less often, by fewer people. Sometimes, here, we luck out of disaster because of physical or economic constraints. Other times we need to act collectively to avert disaster. Acting individually in self-interest is human. Acting collectively toward our collective best interest is a really good idea. Acting individually toward a collective best interest is usually futile. Acting individually in self-interest while hoping that others' individual actions toward a collective best interest will solve our collective problems is <em>stupid and annoying</em>.
<p>3. Sometimes the demands of our world are such that we have to do things that wouldn't be good for everyone to do all the time (cf. Kant). Sometimes when we do we run up against constraints imposed on us by necessary collective actions taken to limit the harms caused by such behaviors. It is bad form, in this scenario, to complain about it.
<p>4. We are all responsible for the consequences of our actions to some degree, in proportion to how much of a choice we really have (cf, I dunno, Camus?). Sometimes people with lots of reasonable choices choose to do things that cause a lot of harm relative to the alternatives, simply because these things benefit them. It is bad form, in this scenario, to disclaim responsibility. It is <em>particularly annoying</em> to disclaim responsibility on the basis that these actions or choices are popular.
<p>OK. That's not comprehensive or absolute, but I think it's reasonable. Good enough to stand around as proof of my logical and moral consistency, in order to annoy the bejesus out of people. BE IT PROCLAIMED.Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-91657252200430217482017-03-02T00:58:00.004-08:002017-03-02T00:58:53.387-08:00Apparently the OJ documentary won an Oscar?I haven't seen the whole thing, only bits and pieces of it, and it was a while ago, and I didn't write about it then. Maybe there's some part of it that examines this and ties it in to the thesis that its title (<i>OJ: Made in America</i>) implies. Anyway, there's a part of it that really stuck with me. They were talking about OJ's mixture of success and struggle fitting in with the rich and mostly white world he inhabited after retirement. There was this idea that there was something off with his constant desire to charm people and present a successful image of himself. So they interviewed a bunch of his rich and mostly white friends, and one of them talked about how he was bad at golf, and how he laughingly cheated at it, and how his golf buddies just couldn't get through to him the importance of honor and sportsmanship on the golf course.
<p>Honestly, if I had to play golf to get through my social interactions I would cheat my ass off (while laughing about it). Because, like OJ, I'm terrible at golf, and I'd just be trying to get on to the next hole and not hold up the group. Sportsmanship? This dude is here because he was a professional sportsman! A typical round of golf is just something to do to pass the time with friends. When these things involve sports or games, and one person isn't very good, you give that person a leg up or take it easy on them, if you're decent. Apparently OJ's rich friends cared more about some mythical honor code of golf than being a good friend, which probably reflects more on them than on him. If he was displaying some kind of character flaw by trying to charm his way through stuff he wasn't great at, this would be a common character flaw that doesn't hold the secret key to his becoming abusive, and then a murderer.
<p>The “secret” key to OJ becoming abusive, and then a murderer, is that he always regarded Nicole more as property (as a symbol of his success and status) than as an actual person. This attitude was obvious from direct quotes that the documentary showed, but did not (in the parts I saw) connect to an assessment of his attitudes or character. He abused her for years, covering it up through connections to police and media, before murdering her. The documentary did cover this, but didn't (as far as I saw) connect it to familiar patterns of domestic abuse or the tacit agreements that keep abuse covered up. If there's one thing that's directly tied to his crimes, and also reflects back on American culture, it's these things.Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-64140187781728532522017-02-20T00:36:00.000-08:002017-02-20T00:36:01.868-08:00This isn't the most important thing you'll read about sexism in tech today.If it has been so far, try <a href="https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber">this</a> and <a href="http://jezebel.com/this-former-uber-engineer-has-an-hr-horror-story-for-th-1792536221?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow">this</a> maybe? Anyway, it's important for guys to speak up about this stuff, and I am (as you all know) just some guy, so...
<h4>This story, in particular</h4>
<p>Those articles linked above were the ones that prompted me to write this, covering Susan Fowler's account of working at Uber for a year, detailing specific incidents of sexual harassment, wider failures of culture and inclusiveness, and poor HR responses to them. I work for Google. Google shares, at least, a lot of jargon with Uber, so when I read Fowler's account I had a couple double-takes, before remembering I wasn't reading something written by one of my colleagues. While accounts of both specific harassment from superiors and general sexism in the culture aren't unheard of at Google, I think our HR and leadership response has generally been better. But then there's a lot that I see from the inside here that I don't see there. When Uber's CEO responds that this sort of thing is against what Uber “stands for”, it's hard to see what Uber does stand for if it only reacts to public allegations — if it has not taken proactive steps to make sure HR and other leadership are prepared when they come up internally. Every organization needs to be ready for these sorts of things to come up internally, because they will. They always do.
<p>Everyone, every man working in tech needs to be ready for these sorts of things to come up, with themselves personally. We will make mistakes. Even if we don't do anything that's specifically worthy of getting called out, we'll do things that contribute to a culture that's really hard on women. So we all need to be ready to respond first with humility, not defensiveness.
<h4>Our whole selves, and nothing but our selves</h4>
<p>Again, my perspective is not the critical one here, but ya gotta write what ya know, 'eh?
<p>Google tries to take more responsibility for its employees' well-being and happiness than other companies I've worked for. When I started there, five years ago, there was a lot of discussion about work-life balance and employee surveys asked about our ability to detach from work in off-time. With answers looking alarming, people looked into the question and found that there appeared to be a spectrum of work-life styles. Some people are “balancers”, who separate their work and personal lives, while other people are “integrators”, who choose to blur the lines, sometimes socializing and taking down-time during the work day, sometimes getting good work done at home. We have a lot of “integrators” at Google, with a lot of official support, and it didn't just start five years ago. This was, perhaps, adaptive to Silicon Valley, where tech campuses are sprawling and isolated. It made sense to eat at work because there weren't restaurants around; it made sense to go running from work, because it would be dark by the time you got home. And it made sense for companies to provide employees, especially younger ones, some built-in, almost college-like social opportunities. I moved to the South Bay just after college to work for Nvidia, hardly knowing anyone on the west coast at the time, and the difficulty I had building a social life there is the main reason why I left after a year. In any case, now the surveys explicitly emphasize “bringing your whole self to work”, more than work-life balance.
<p>When the idea of balancers and integrators came up at Google, I was sure I was a balancer. I truly value my independence, having an identity and a life that's set apart a bit from my career — <i>these opinions are not the opinions of my employer</i>, that goes without saying. But I've found over the last few years that, at least at Google (where there are some really strong “integrator” draws) I'm more of an integrator that I thought. This isn't always to my great credit, but I won't get into that here; doing stuff with colleagues has rekindled my interest in competitive running and cycling, allowed me to share knowledge and learn stuff about tea, and helped me develop a personal sense of style. If that's not the most world-changing stuff, well, working with people that care about my life a bit has made work a place I look forward to going when things are tough in my personal life.
<p>This is much, much easier for me than it is for most people. I'm a skinny white dude with middle-of-the-road interests, tastes, and politics (by tech-industry standards). I almost never have to worry about not being accepted. I don't have kids, so I have the schedule flexibility to hang out after work. I don't drive to work, so I can drink if that's going on (surprisingly often at Google, and I'm not sure it's for the best, but that's another story). Introversion makes the volume of loud social events and conversations draining sometimes, but introverts in tech are common and fairly well understood. Would it be more equal if we brought less of ourselves to work, just the “professional” parts? My current thinking: what we call “professional” is full of exclusion, conflict, and discomfort, we just don't talk about it (it wouldn't be professional). The freedom to bring one's full self seems more critical to people that aren't so privileged in the status quo. Being able to openly discuss effectiveness of various bike tires at work is cool; being able to openly discuss the challenges you have being taken seriously at work, at work, seems a little bigger.
<p>That means when we bring our whole selves we can't be selfish about it. If we're bringing our whole selves we have a responsibility to make sure that's meaningful, and not just a new veneer over the old exclusive professionalism (bikes are the new golf, IPAs are the new scotch, etc.). It means that we have to look out for our colleagues and make a point of being welcoming.
<h4>Riffs</h4>
<p><i>The leather jacket thing</i>. Considering how much discussion there has been over how thoughtful you ought to be when giving clothes as swag, and how often women are left out or made uncomfortable when that thought is lacking, this should have been avoidable! When the status quo is so male-dominated, not every avoidable thing will be avoided. That's when the response matters, a lot. The ham-handed, defensive response suggests a culture problem — it's one of the things that suggests Uber hasn't actually stood for anything.
<p><i>The performance review and transfer games</i>. Again, these seem to show an organization that is desperate to retain women and is willing to try anything except admitting it has problems and working on them.
<p><i>“The HR rep began the meeting by asking me if I had noticed that *I* was the common theme in all of the reports I had been making”</i>. Keeping in mind that what's judged reasonable is usually a matter of the status quo, <a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw#Maxims_for_Revolutionists_.281903.29">all progress</a> depends on those unreasonable people that don't accept it.
<p>I was trying to find a few more things to link in here, and couldn't find them. There was an article that went around maybe a year ago about some true excesses in culture-fit hiring among tech startups, which ties in with the idea of a new veneer over old exclusive professionalism, but I couldn't find it.Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-6643593339193687312017-01-26T23:20:00.000-08:002017-01-26T23:32:14.785-08:00In One<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY6nA4bxEcQ-uniJ4-YIpauYQVrrf7JInDTpWsZY9riSWmhlFQ3iKSN3f03H2bLaw8n7qP15oERRUqTPUWag-73ySes-tQthGBIYJy3OYKO_sShsB7zHjUVg4dJJRgDfXf1Afd/s1600/port_townsend_house.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY6nA4bxEcQ-uniJ4-YIpauYQVrrf7JInDTpWsZY9riSWmhlFQ3iKSN3f03H2bLaw8n7qP15oERRUqTPUWag-73ySes-tQthGBIYJy3OYKO_sShsB7zHjUVg4dJJRgDfXf1Afd/s1600/port_townsend_house.jpg" style="max-width: 90%" title="down big peninsula way" /></a>
<p>After I said I'd heard Port Townsend was “a charming town or some shit” Wes said a blog would be a good format for my ranting and that I should write a sarcastic travelogue, or rant while traveling into a blog(ue), but o, ho, Wes, I was several steps ahead of you there.
<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGNKWBaPgNRRx5OP9CF9tuUPtv5m50TCCcrG7c__2TYwXSAXjtdU8qbsUZo8HJt18apSmprOTE-v3wGw92EJBBwUYvbQbTSE-i8CYTy5lU3hUuSMPHKzitYLA5NOshm4QDdEBi/s1600/port_townsend_fountain.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGNKWBaPgNRRx5OP9CF9tuUPtv5m50TCCcrG7c__2TYwXSAXjtdU8qbsUZo8HJt18apSmprOTE-v3wGw92EJBBwUYvbQbTSE-i8CYTy5lU3hUuSMPHKzitYLA5NOshm4QDdEBi/s1600/port_townsend_fountain.jpg" style="max-width: 90%" title="some content in that form" /></a>
<p>In a café in the off-hours in a tourist town in the off-season one man said that another man had called him a fascist and he wasn't the one wearing the <a href="http://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/01/11/24794084/searching-for-richard-spencer-what-i-found-in-a-small-montana-town-at-the-center-of-a-neo-nazi-troll-storm">fashy</a>.
<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVXPZh0F9SbSccmmZhTYotHRutOre7n08qVJGguze1J7u800HunOZm5C9iQWU18IQaulx5_0LZ8CQ7akvuCKBMyi3u_uCmhOhFlNur5Gey4EKoVwynXmwg0v2RyNriJvpfsszP/s1600/port_townsend_icetrees.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVXPZh0F9SbSccmmZhTYotHRutOre7n08qVJGguze1J7u800HunOZm5C9iQWU18IQaulx5_0LZ8CQ7akvuCKBMyi3u_uCmhOhFlNur5Gey4EKoVwynXmwg0v2RyNriJvpfsszP/s1600/port_townsend_icetrees.jpg" style="max-width: 90%" title="up ahead three sets of headlights" /></a>
<p>There's probably some tough-guy nonsense expression that you don't find out what you're about until you get punched — this whole trip happened before Richard Spencer got punched, and I'd been thinking back then that he didn't know what he was about, but then I've also been reading a couple biographies of Emil Zátopek, who repeatedly found out what he was about, and I really love self-knowledge, but even Zátopek found a lot that drove him to drink, and most of us are neither as great nor as good as he was, so maybe I should learn to smile at lack of self-knowledge.
<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW8jqT_uG_Oh6d3v-IW7i-AHzCPvLHjzrS2eEgzJsBusQC8wlZWffS2aoEIL8XwRiUJPBLKn5FVlpxfq-Q9TdWF2wfMkss48WBwucKDxPy3HeI0n1EK2B_ke_97OXkQQ2EIs6C/s1600/port_townsend_castle.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW8jqT_uG_Oh6d3v-IW7i-AHzCPvLHjzrS2eEgzJsBusQC8wlZWffS2aoEIL8XwRiUJPBLKn5FVlpxfq-Q9TdWF2wfMkss48WBwucKDxPy3HeI0n1EK2B_ke_97OXkQQ2EIs6C/s1600/port_townsend_castle.jpg" style="max-width: 90%" title="i work on google maps ok and let's just say real castles have street numbers the way real families have surnames" /></a>
<p>My brother and his wife keep a <a href="https://ourluxlife.wordpress.com/">non-sarcastic travelogue</a>, which I think requires pictures, as sometimes things aren't quite what they seem in these places; particularly in the off-season you have to plan a little but not too much, you have to be open to experience, sometimes experience is learning nothing.
<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIAXR2qj8wlQ8B1c-CEg-iIU5ED_ckJDm6T9MEPpHVST_BslKzaBXUeIQvKprM3iwATPQXKOGDEccpxfn1WSy7WCc5egSiG4xKFaLkenam4Qv8MMZ6rotCw1puXUNPTs90xj9r/s1600/port_townsend_lake_crescent.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIAXR2qj8wlQ8B1c-CEg-iIU5ED_ckJDm6T9MEPpHVST_BslKzaBXUeIQvKprM3iwATPQXKOGDEccpxfn1WSy7WCc5egSiG4xKFaLkenam4Qv8MMZ6rotCw1puXUNPTs90xj9r/s1600/port_townsend_lake_crescent.jpg" style="max-width: 90%" title="give me a fucking break how do you expect me to be sarcastic about this shit" /></a>Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-41652765923565573992016-12-31T10:26:00.000-08:002016-12-31T10:26:20.707-08:00Trail-Oriented Development on the ERC?Seattle Met gives <a href="https://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2016/12/29/bring-on-2017">Trail-Oriented Development</a> the big headline for their guest article by King County Council member Claudia Balducci. That might lead us to ask: what does “Trail-Oriented Development” really mean? The term is coined in reference to “Transit-Oriented Development” (TOD), which indicates new development built around mass-transit access. That sounds nice; trail-oriented development would then be new development built around trail access, here specifically the planned Eastside Rail Corridor (ERC) trail. But sometimes the “transit-oriented” label is applied questionably; when we see “trail-oriented” used we should look at exactly what's being proposed and what it means.
<p>First, why is TOD (here, the T is for <em>transit</em>, as usual) sometimes not TOD? Today many mass-transit lines follow major highways, which are the primary mode of access to the area. They do that because following these highways is the easiest way to get a bus within range of a large number of homes and destinations that have been built along and near the highway. A lot of these routes were established and grew into popular, important “trunk“ routes in response to travel demand generated by development that formed around the highways. Metro's E Line is sort of like this and the A Line even more, but even bigger and more expensive projects do this: Sound Transit's current network looks a lot like the freeway network, and with a few notable exceptions will continue to through ST2 and ST3. If a freeway interchange is built, and then an office park next to it, then the interchange is expanded to handle the additional traffic, then express bus service is started, then eventually a train station is built there, and then part of the office park is expanded, is that really TOD? Or is that just a nice-sounding buzzword, while the expansion will mostly continue to lean on the freeway interchange for access? This comes up a lot around here, with recent and future redevelopment in places like Northgate, Lynnwood, and Bellevue's Spring District (along with many others).
<p>What about the ERC? It's a defunct freight railway; within Kirkland the rails have already been removed and a temporary gravel trail constructed. Within Renton and southern Bellevue the trail is sort of hemmed in by Lake Washington, I-405, and steep slopes; there really isn't much room for development of any kind near it south of downtown Bellevue. Around and north of downtown Bellevue it used to provide rail access to some fairly large industrial lots; some of these are still industrial while others have newer big-box stores and car dealerships on them. Continuing north it backs up to some office buildings and apartment or condo complexes before entering Kirkland, where it runs along a hillside surrounded by expensive view homes (whose residents reliably agitate and file lawsuits over any proposed change to the corridor). North of that is old industrial Kirkland, some of which has been recently been replaced with low-slung commercial buildings. North of there, the Totem Lake area, named for a small lake but dominated by a massive freeway interchange, home to a chronically struggling mall and the hopes of generations of Kirkland leaders that they could focus growth out there (growing their tax base without pissing off people in older parts of town) by redeveloping it. After escaping Totem Lake the industrial character resumes, broken up by hillsides and the wineries of Woodinville.
<p>So since the corridor's industrial peak it has already seen some changes, with mostly retail and commercial buildings replacing rail-dependent industries. Building out the trail and focusing planning resources along it might accelerate this change, and probably add some homes to the mix. It's hard to see much happening south of downtown Bellevue (because of terrain and physical obstacles), or in Woodinville (I think everything that isn't a hillside there is a floodplain; maybe some of the beer-and-wine businesses will open up trail-facing entrances and try to compete with Red Hook). Some parts in Bellevue could be really exciting. Through much of Bellevue the rail corridor is a big physical barrier that's near other parallel barriers (especially 405 and 520), so the areas near it aren't very cohesive. A good trail conversion would add lots of ways across it, connecting homes and destinations on either side in ways that haven't been possible before. On the other hand, taming the connections to downtown Bellevue would take a lot more work. In Kirkland I'm less excited. I've heard people from the city of Kirkland talk about these ideas, and they seem pretty excited. They mostly seem interested in accelerating the ongoing land-use changes along the corridor, which is OK; good, even, if it results in daily needs like basic shopping and childcare available within walking distance of more people. But it's mostly on pretty small slivers of land... until you get up to Totem Lake, which is what I think it's really about. Kirkland wants yet another hook to get some developer to make Totem Lake happen, for real this time.
<p>Now here's the problem with any “transit-” or “trail-oriented” development project in Totem-Lake. ST3's 405 BRT plan includes a station in Totem Lake. That's one little bus station, about the size of the freeway bus station that's already there today. The ERC trail is one 12-foot-wide strip passing through the southeast quadrant of the neighborhood. So there's some transit, and there's a trail. But they're not all that big, they're not all that close, and they're not really connected to eachother. I-405 is really big, and it's the Prime Meridian of Totem Lake. NE 124th Street is really big, and it's the Equator. And they sure are connected, with a very large interchange right in the dead center of the neighborhood. Whatever good there is in 405 BRT (which I'm skeptical of in general) and the ERC Trail (plenty of good things, especially in Bellevue), we shouldn't pretend that they'll really change the game in Totem Lake, which will continue to be dominated by roads and parking lots. So we shouldn't let Totem Lake redevelopment be greenwashed by them. There are parts of Kirkland where low-carbon redevelopment is possible today and Totem Lake just isn't one of them without major infrastructure work.Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-45822993242413949562016-12-30T10:49:00.001-08:002016-12-31T07:13:52.714-08:002016: Seattle's Cycling Progress<h4>The BMP</h4>
<p>In 2014 Seattle adopted a major revision to its <a href="http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/bikemaster.htm">Bike Master Plan</a> (BMP), defining routes of city-wide importance for bike transportation and promising to create good bike infrastructure along them, or at least serving the general travel need they represent. Though this represented more of a general aspiration for the shape of the network than a commitment to specific projects, and it never promised to do anything by any particular time, it was more specific than previous plans and explicitly called for higher standards in facilities. No route of city-wide importance would be implemented by slapping down “sharrows” on an arterial road, for example. It wasn't just bike advocates that took notice: opponents of including a bike lane on NE 65th Street through the Ravenna-Bryant business district packed a community center in protest and got the city to move the line, indicating a nearby side-street route (which probably would have happened several years later, when it became truly relevant, anyway). This was an exciting moment: this “master plan”, which explicitly <em>didn't</em> commit to anything specific or to any time frame, felt that real to people.
<p>Just as exciting for the more wonky among us, though not as visible, was Seattle's subsequent release of a five-year “Implementation Plan”, setting out what sort of progress the city expected to make between 2015 and 2019. I believe the first version of the Implementation Plan was released in late 2014 and it had some really ambitious stuff in it! In March 2015 the city published an update, cutting a few things back due to changing conditions. It was reasonable to update the plan every year or so, to reflect differences between planned and real progress and changing conditions, but I also thought it was important to compare real progress against a fixed version of the plan. So I took the March 2015 version, broke down projects by year, analyzed it against the Master Plan, and have been tracking progress against it since then. That work is in in <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qgpskE86jVRxXpXU4dF9ANhx9ImgSs0XLLeEXB5JkBA/edit?usp=sharing">this spreadsheet</a>. The March 2015 Implementation Plan covered 73.8 of the 176.2 miles in the BMP's city-wide network (41.9%), and only a few items in the Implementation Plan didn't correspond to Master Plan items. As for year-by-year progress, the Implementation Plan set out about 20 projects per-year, and I was curious whether SDOT would keep up that pace.
<p>In 2015 the city completed half of the 22 projects they promised. That sounds bad, but I was tracking completion, while the plan only promised that these projects would <em>start</em> in 2015 (I track completion because it can't be fudged and is evident to the public), and most of them had been started (at least outreach or conceptual design was done). They also completed some things that had been planned in previous years that weren't counted toward the total; if they finished all the outstanding items in 2016 and got about half of the 2016 items done they'd still be in good shape! Toward the end of 2015 we got the disappointing news that the city wasn't going to release a final downtown bike network plan by 2015, and in fact would be kicking the can way down the road because of complications with bus routing due to the Convention Center expansion. This tore a big hole in the 2016 update to the Implementation Plan, removing the many downtown projects.
<p>Even so, if the city has the capacity to implement about 20 bike projects per year, it certainly had a backlog that would allow it to get about 20 projects done in 2016. On the ground they finished 10 of the 11 outstanding 2015 projects, plus three-and-a-half of the 21 originally slated for 2016, plus a couple 2017 items that got moved up: by my count, 15.5 projects. Many of the 2016 projects have started, but some haven't, and that's not limited to downtown projects. <strong>Seattle is making progress, but it's both behind and off-pace</strong>.
<h4>Bike counts</h4>
<p>The Fremont Bridge will <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cWkB8K_CzEYbPDZ0l7z7Mg_YORQt5O6VLw1s_VIk5nQ/edit?usp=sharing">not make a million</a> this year, and will probably finish a little behind last year. The windstorm in October and some snow in December, both coming with threats of worse weather than what actually happened, kept cycling numbers down in those months. The Westlake Cycletrack opened in September, and we did pretty well in September and November, but not overwhelmingly so. The West Seattle Bridge got a boost from the 99 closure in May, but its usage has also been hit hard by weather late in the year, probably a little more than in Fremont. Monthly patterns are pretty similar between the two bridges, as you'd expect with weather as a major driver. Fremont is doing a little better year-over-year than West Seattle since September, which might indicate a small boost from Westlake. If that boost is real Fremont has a good chance to get back over a million in 2017.
<h4>Suburban things</h4>
<p>As far as I know most of Seattle's suburbs don't have public multi-year bike infrastructure plans to track (and I wouldn't have time to do that anyway), but there have been some notable things going on throughout the region.
<ul>
<li>The part of the <a href="http://www.kingcounty.gov/services/parks-recreation/parks/trails/regional-trails/popular-trails/lake-to-sound.aspx">Lake to Sound Trail</a> that follows Des Moines Memorial Drive between 156th and Normandy Road is almost complete. It will one day continue to the south and connect to the Des Moines Creek Trail (and the Sound), with the exact route yet to be determined; the Lake to Sound Trail heads east along 156th toward Renton. This segment is also part a path continuing along Des Moines Memorial Drive to North SeaTac Park, with bike lanes continuing from there <em>almost</em> to the Seattle city limit and the Duwamish Route.
<li>Also near the Des Moines Creek Trail, a climbing lane was built from the trail up to the new Angle Lake light-rail station. The new lane is a steep climb for people that have just finished a long, easy climb.
<li>Bellevue striped a bike lane that falls along a key route, on 116th Ave NE from about 12th to 24th, by doing a road diet! It's also in the process of a massive road expansion on 120th and NE 4th that also includes bike lanes, for what it's worth. The Northup Way rebuild that will eventually connect the two sections of the 520 trail with bike lanes is underway.
<li>More sections of the East Lake Sammamish Trail are being paved, pushing it toward what the county will dubiously call “completion” in the next couple years.
<li>Eastside Rail Corridor trail planning is underway. The county wants to get an interim trail open quickly, at least in some sections. Others (especially near Bellevue) may be held up by Sound Transit construction.
</ul>Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-9213157569264392502016-12-18T00:53:00.000-08:002016-12-18T08:34:35.303-08:00Occam's Razor's Edge City Lights<i>A paunchy, greying man wearing a dark sweater walked up and down the security lines, asking each in turn to please not put our shoes in the bins, because people put their food in those bins! I thought, “What kind of dingus would put their food in those bins — they've had shoes in them!” Bombarded by the noise of his voice and mine I forgot to empty my pockets before entering the X-Ray machine...</i>
<br><br><p>“I've about had it with understanding," the man said. He sat on the edge of the bed, facing the wall, pulling on a sweatshirt. He cracked, "I tell every line the same damn thing but the next one never listens!" His voice was still raised from the din of the terminal. The joke did not land.
<p>“You don't have to do this,” his wife sighed. “We could move to the coast. You could do something else.”
<p>“Ah, it's not like that.” A long pause followed. He was a couple generations removed from northern farm people that stared at the flat horizon and left lots of space in their conversations. “I'm adjusted.” As if remembering himself, his voice adjusted to the house and they spoke softly as usual. “How about Saint Paul?” He turned to show his grin. “Chicago? Always has great Christmas decorations, not like here.”
<p>“No! Bad! No more shoveling snow!” Now she smiled slyly. “Barcelona.”
<p>“It's bad enough to fly back home from here, with both cities being Delta hubs.”
<p>“How does a guy work so many years in an airport and hate flying? You're not half as well adjusted as you think, mister!”
<p>“Oh, I love flying, watching the ground recede and return, it's still awe-inspiring. I just hate the security lines. Those pompous tyrant-for-a-days telling you to take off your belt, hassling you about your arch supports!”
<p>“Just get pre-check already!”
<p>“Anti-democratic nonsense. And everyone trying to sleep on the plane making me feel like a real jerk for having the reading light on.”
<p>“... and a neck pillow...”
<p>“I don't need comfort, I need purpose!”
<p>“... and an iPad...”
<p>“I don't need to be entertained,” by this point he couldn't keep a straight face and he laughed and stammered while he searched for a line, and she let him search, and he finished, “I need to be enlightened!”
<p>“You don't need to be right —”
<p>“— in fact, I prefer to be wrong —”
<p>“— you just need to be contrary!”
<p>“Anyway, I really have just had it with understanding. Everyone's on Facebook, they just want you to <em>understand</em> this <em>one thing</em>, whatever it is now. This fucking year. The idiots crowing about Trump. The idiots ranting about how we have to <em>understand</em> the idiots crowing about Trump, making carefully sure not to share with any of the idiots crowing about Trump. Half my old friends from Madison that are just mortified, apparently about what Trump says about them. The Bernie people, still. The anti-Bernie people, still! At least the Bernie people are for something. But when I go see them we don't talk about all that, we treat eachother like people. When I live in the midwest I never use Facebook, I never get on airplanes, and I treat my friends like people. That's a life.”
<p>“When you <em>lived</em> in the midwest you didn't have a cell phone.”
<p>“And I was a bike-riding vegan. Now I live in Seattle and run 'em down in my Suburban on my way out to go hunt pandas.”
<p>“You live in Federal Way, you take the bus to work, and you keep a patch kit in your Civic.”
<p>“In case I come across someone in need. And I have.”
<p>“Wasn't <em>he</em> a Bernie person?”
<p>“Yeah, but it was still 2015, and he didn't even spout any nonsense about superdelegates. And I proved I can still fix a flat better than some kid even if I never could ride fixed in this town. I'm happy with the exchange.”
<p>“You could fix people's flats on the coast. No more hopeless-ceaseless-line-of-fresh-clueless-assholes-from-shift-start-to-shift-end. You could stop being a... a pompous tyrant-for-a-day or whatever.”
<p>“I'm adjusted. What about your job? It's all the same once we're adjusted. Your quarterly planning meetings, where you set goals for advancing —”
<p>“— the new woman on my team, not the new new one but the one from six months ago —”
<p>“— Amy? —”
<p>“— Yeah, she said like half the stuff I said was dystopic in the 2017 goals was dystopic, and I couldn't... I had to —”
<p>“— You're, like, her mentor —”
<p>“— I'm her manager, her mentor is... you don't know him, different sub-team.”
<p>“You're <em>like</em> her mentor. You're her role-model.”
<p>“She took over a bunch of stuff in the women-in-tech group at our branch that I was supposed to be doing, and she's killing it. I run around and get coffee and shirts for her events. She connects with the youth. The youth are <em>scaaaaary</em>. They outnumber us, and they're just learning how bad our knees are!”
<p>“You did ride fixed in this town for... longer than she's been coding? Anyway, she said, like... half the stuff you said was dystopic... she also said the advancing dystopia was dystopic. She has an eye for dystopia.”
<p>“Yes.”
<p>“And you couldn't agree out-loud, even in a one-on-one meeting.”
<p>“Sure, and every quarter they're going to keep making new plans and we'll keep making new goals and maybe if I'm lucky the best I can hope is that they won't be dystopic?”
<p>“Yes.”
<p>“I don't think that's fair. We make people's lives better. I'm someone's <em>like-mentor</em>. And I have a real voice.”
<p>“To shout against the dystopia?”
<p>She rolled her eyes. “Shouting against the dystopia is just not how I roll!”
<p>“So you'd walk in next week, mysteriously give your two weeks, and fuck off to the coast without shouting against even a little dystopia?” He made a silly face and waved to indicate somehow that the phrase “fuck off” was not meant as pejorative, which basically worked.
<p>“Maybe not the coast, anywhere but Minnesota.”Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31911736.post-24053364717883801882016-12-04T01:11:00.000-08:002016-12-18T01:00:31.899-08:00These are lyrics.They are probably the best lyrics I've written in a long time. Unfortunately the music I've written for them is simultaneously boring and too hard for me to play. So I'll probably record this song at some point but it will be really bad. Also, if you were wondering, yes, it is an homage to <i>The Sun Also Rises</i> with all the Pamplona/bullfighting stuff replaced by Chicago and dentistry. Because my dental visits have a sense of ceremony analogous to... um, anyway... in the spirit of the novel, if you think you're in this song you probably are (not really, it's all made up).
<hr>
<p>Steven you know my generation's lot's the mess that yours left after<br>
Steven I've been back to Chicago two times since the laughing gas disaster<br>
To feel the newfound menace in those brick walls that now seethe<br>
The Madhouse dentist would not see me, she just ran upstairs and screamed through my teeth!
<p>Midwest punctuality starts at fourteen and ends at the Edens<br>
So I was on my third beer as the trumpets tuned their bell impedance<br>
She burst in with her painted troupe but not her jealous lover<br>
To say nothing of her husband whom she fought just like a brother, I say
<p>Every time I've seen you since the summer of oh-five<br>
You just reminded me how you don't exist and left me on the stairs for alive
<p>We rode up to the west side, bidons full of makeshift absinthe<br>
She, her husband, and her lover, so I fucked off to play Go Fish<br>
On return my friend the organist had the chant at breakdown tempo<br>
My companions drunk as I was, front teeth busted from the endo
<p>The hygienist did the cleaning with her stiff grey scrubs and picks<br>
Then the floor cleared for the dentist, long coat gleaming white with a smudge of red lipstick!<br>
On the lapel!<br>
<p><i>(instrumental bit to break up the wordiness)</i>
<p>A jar of tonsils left along the Wood Street underpass<br>
We should all stay on the west coast where we all admit we're never gonna last
<p><i>(more instrumental)</i>
<p>The calls came in collect for me, I never could refuse them<br>
She saw my good nature and my lack and only once confused them<br>
Oh that's just my self-delusion, she was always gonna make it<br>
That's why she can tease my injury while I just beg to fake it, she said
<p>Every time I see you, since the summer of oh-five<br>
You just remind me how you don't exist and leave me for alive!<br>
On the stairs!Al Dimondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356410883740760010noreply@blogger.com0