Category: General Gabbing

A variety of delighting sights; a smattering of happenings; a compendium of concepts…

How much of employment is emotional soothing? 

JulianLeave a comment

Actually: how much? 

I recently read a Reddit post by a multi-exited CEO. She mentioned that most of her job is informational framing. It’s the same facts, framed precisely for the target. 

I’ve coached a number of CEOs. I’ve ghostwritten for even more. The uber-successful ones are universally kind, curious, and generous. The medium-successful are jumpy and reactive. 

I wonder if emotional soothing is such a big deal for humans that it’s the key piece to be solved before all others. (“You’re not you when you’re cranky”, and the like.) 

If that’s true, then solving this main need opens up a lot of doors. Logical thinking becomes much easier. Reliable behavior, too. 

People like people they can rely on. People bet on people they can rely on. 

Perhaps it’s those middle-successful who need the emotional soothing, 

while the best of the best just take care of themselves.

Don’t gussy up poor-person food and tell me it’s rich. 

JulianLeave a comment

I’ve been to Indonesia. I’ve eaten nasi goreng. I liked it. That’s why I can’t eat it anywhere else. 

Nasi goreng is poor-person food. For under $5, you can get a heaping plate of eggs, rice, vegetables, meat, and spices. In the US, you can get the same (or more often, a worse version of the same) dish for $20. That doesn’t make it better! 

I’m in Dublin. Today, I ate a boxty. It’s potato dumplings plus cream sauce. It’s clearly poor-person food. I followed it up with fish & chips, also poor-person food. The first was 27euros. The second 21euros. Both were bland and uninteresting. Both would have been passable at 7euros. These were the best places in Dublin! The highest-rated for their respective dishes! Featured on best-of lists! 

I’m perfectly satisfied by 6-dumplings-for-$5.50 from a basement store with a bathroom toilet more disgusting than any at Woodstock. What I don’t like is putting a bow on that set of dumplings and selling them for $20. 

So far, Partner and I have eaten 6 meals in Ireland. We are 2/5 on passability: the late-night kebab upon arrival was delicious, as was the full Irish breakfast this morning. The beef-and-guinness stew, the fish & chips, and the boxtys are to be avoided. 

Tomorrow, we try the lamb. At least a $23 lamb shank seems appropriately priced. Let’s hope it’s also appropriately tasty.  

I <3 Ireland

JulianLeave a comment

I landed in Dublin three hours ago. Three of my first five experiences: 

  1. Outside the airport, I ask a fellow whether we can tap-to-pay on the bus. He says we need euros in cash or a local transit card. We tell him we don’t have either. He initially pulls out a 5 euro note to give it to us, then realizes he can just tap us on instead, so he does. What a generous bloke! 
  2. Immediately after exiting the bus, Partner & I ask a bouncer at the local pub if they’re still serving food. He says no, but goes out of his way to suggest other options. This is not typical bouncer behavior. 
  3. A short walk later, a college-looking kid tells a homeless-looking man, “I’ll get ya tomorrow.”

I’m going to like Ireland.

Oh, Spain! 

JulianLeave a comment

Oh Spain,

Why do I hate thee? Let me count the why’s…  

  1. Your airport security of pointless inefficiency. Not so bad as France – where one is mandated to snake all the way up and down through every single stanchion – but close. Yes, I think airport security is a waste of time and money (and I shall #neverforget this fact). But I also think that a security officer shouldn’t allow the passenger to rifle through their own bag in search of whatever suspected contraband may be present. Anyone with any sleight-of-hand skill would be able to beat that! 
  2. A lack of maintenance or respect for quality. You can smell that they peaked in the 1500s and have performed no maintenance since. 
  3. People touching you in lines and on the bus. When standing beside the busdriver, a woman physically moved my hand in order to speak to the bus driver. Where I live, you get slapped for that shit. That’s not even accounting for the fact that she was talking to the bus driver while the bus was in motion, immediately below the sign that said do not talk to the bus driver while the bus is in motion. 
  4. They think their food is good. The cheese is good (but not as good as French or Italian cheese). The bread is fine (but not as good as French bread). The jamon is out of this world incredible. Bien hecho, no quiero nada mas. 
  5. The language is dumb and inconsistent. France has a whole department dedicated to the quality of their language. Spain has multiple languages. 
  6. The restaurants are closed from 4-7pm. That’s when I want to eat! 

Thank god I’m going to Ireland in two days. 

Green-Haired, Harem-Having Druids 

JulianLeave a comment

How many people do you know who go by “Druid” who have green hair and a harem? 

I know two. 

The first I met ~6 years ago. The second I met tonight. No, I don’t think they’re the same person. I conjured a memory of the first-Druid‘s face. It’s distinct. 

You might think the world of people who go by Druid with green hair and a harem is small. But in the Burning Man community, the name Druid is a reasonably common name. Burners frequently dye their hair. A Druid is one in touch with nature, so the obvious color is green. Further, many Burners date in polyamorous relationships. Basically, if you grabbed a random guy out of a bag of 1000 Burners, you shouldn’t be particularly shocked by a green-haired, Druid-named harem-haver. 

I’m reminded of an AI matchmaker whose blog I used to write. One client said to the CEO something like “I’m looking for a six-foot tall half-Asian CEO with blue eyes.” The CEO scoffed, saying “there are probably like two of those in the country.” The client said “I’ve dated three.” 

If you exist in the subculture — whatever the subculture is — you’ll see a lot of them. And people in subcultures agglomerate. 

Put another way: a friend of mine swung down from New England to visit New York for a week. He said to me, “I don’t know how to ask this question, and I mean no offense by it: why are there so many gay people here?” 

I told him, “Because there are so many gay people here.” 

The ease of AI

JulianLeave a comment

Today, Partner and I planned a trip. Three days ago, we weren’t planning on going to Europe. Yesterday night, we had booked and scheduled nothing. Today, we have an entire itinerary, including flights to and from, housing, five restaurants (one reserved), two tours, one museum, and four theater show tickets.

Previously, this trip would have taken me ~3 days to plan. Now, I do it in five hours. Thank you, Claude.

Where does the extra time go?

I’ve heard that work-time-savings leads to people working more hours. For me, I don’t know if that’s true. We’re all on the hedonic treadmill to some degree. But the hour I spend at the gym is a glorious hour, and it’s not improved by more expensive equipment. The Chinatown basement dumplings are exquisite, and they’re $5.50 to eat while strolling across the bridge to Brooklyn. When Partner and I visited Budapest, we stayed in a five-star hotel for 2 nights, followed by a $60/night aparthotel (an apartment converted into a hotel). We dramatically preferred the aparthotel, and not just for fundamentals like location. We like having our own fridge and stove.

Much happiness comes from the removal of friction. When drudgery goes away, the system shines brighter. I could be aging; my values changing, but I don’t feel the need to spend the extra time grinding. What would be the point? Where would we go? If you grind, grind, grind, eventually: you disappear.

Error-filled poker is best poker

JulianLeave a comment

Tonight I played in a poker game. $50 buy-in tournament, unlimited rebuys, and you pay an additional $10 in cash to the person who knocks you out each time you’re knocked out. 

A list of the errors that the host made: 

  1. Not moving the blinds properly when someone is knocked out. (The correct action: the big blind moves to its proper position. The small blind follows the big blind. If this process would lead to someone being small blind twice in a row, there is no small blind.)
  2. When coloring-up chips, arbitrarily rounding up. (“Coloring up” is the process of removing small-denomination chips when they’re no longer useful. If someone has eight $10 chips and the small blind is now $100 and the big blind $200, you might as well turn all the $10 chips into $50 chips. There is a designated process for coloring up. It’s called a “chip race”. Our host instead just rounded people up… sometimes. Like, if you had three $100 chips, she just gave you a $500. But somebody received three $1000 chips in exchange for a trove of $50 chips. And there’s NO WAY he had 60 of those $50s. I think it far more likely that she mis-mathed.) 
  3. Miscounting stacks. At one point, one guy busted another. Only they miscounted how much money the two guys had, so they left the loser with a few chips when they shouldn’t have. I noticed that they miscounted. But I had only been present at this game for ~30 minutes when the miscount occurred, in a room where I was the plus one to someone I’d never actually hung out with. I didn’t want to intervene if someone else might catch it, and didn’t want to overstep my role. Nobody likes a newbie know-it-all who can eyeball a miscount from the other side of the table. 
  4. When a card is exposed, they offer the would-be owner of the exposed card the option to call a misdeal. Again, this is a circumstance with clearly defined process. Follow the process. (Certainly don’t give the would-be owner the option to call a misdeal after that person has looked at their replacement card. I was the beneficiary of this option in one circumstance, and being new to the game, let it slide. They exposed my ace, replaced it with a three, and I called a misdeal.) 
  5. If one of the players is outside for a smoke break, we fold his hand. But if the host’s boyfriend is away from the table, we wait for him. (Of the above issues, this is probably the main circumstance I find chicanerous. I’ll chalk it up to the cost of her hosting.) 

Don’t interpret these as complaints. I had an absolute blast. 

I didn’t only take advantage of the spots where it was good for me. In this game, I was along for the ride. There were ~3 spots where the mis-done blinds were meaningfully negative for me. There were also ~2 spots where the incorrectly-done blinds were positive for me. I didn’t care. I was there to have fun and meet people and bring them joy and be invited back. 

I probably will be. The host likes that I keep the game moving. 

At ~11:30pm, when a player busted, dropping us from four players to three, I ran to the bathroom for a quick pee break. While I was in the bathroom, the other two players agreed to designate first, second, and third place by chip count if I accepted. The guy with the fewest chips agreed to taking third place (20% of the pot; $100). I would receive second place (30% of the pot; $150). The chip leader would receive first place (50% of the pot; $250). 

This division is unfair. It’s most unfair to the third-place guy, as it’s acting like he’s busted. It’s second-most unfair to me because I’m way better at poker than these guys (and the upside from second place to first is big). But I want to be invited back. 

So the host’s boyfriend got to win first. He was excited. The host is happy too. So am I. I had a great night. 

It was so fun. I spoke deeply and intimately with a treasure trove of people: 

  • The Long Island-born car mechanic who now owns his own dealership of refrigerated trucks and works 6am-6pm Monday through Friday. He’s as gruff and masculine as you’d expect. But he also says to his girlfriend, when he hears about this weekend’s storm: “You know what that means? Snuggle time!” 
  • The Frenchman who immediately clocks me as a fellow French-speaker because I can pronounce his name correctly… and who speaks so quickly and with such a thick accent that absolutely no one else understands him. My favorite part: he gets frustrated about folding a hand that would have hit a straight, after seeing another guy show his flush! Why are you upset about folding the hand that would have lost you a bunch of money?! 
  • The oldest man at the table, who has played with the group for years, who still doesn’t know the chip denominations. At one point, he said, “I’ll get it next year.” He’s probably been saying that for years. At one point, he moved to the seat beside me. I helped him by telling him, “The action’s on you. It’s $3000. That’s six reds or three blacks.” Then he’d still toss in the wrong amount, and I’d give him his change. 

I had a blast, brought joy to other people, and won. 

Same time next month. 

Clown school works

JulianLeave a comment

Today I missed ~8 serves in a row. This fact became comic fodder for my then-opponent and later-teammate Rocky. The rest of my game was good. My team lost 4-11, a respectable score for only having one server. It equates, approximately, to 8-11 if both teammates could serve. It probably equates to slightly higher, since my missing every serve hurts my team’s momentum. Somehow, through the whole experience, I laughed. The other players – despite being annoyed that my serve was failing – clearly enjoyed the experience more than they otherwise would. (Rocky made jokes; my partner Daphne kindly suggested adjustments; my opponent-whose-name-escapes-me offered suggestions after the game.) 

I wonder if today’s missing serves comes from today being a particularly heavy gym day.  Or the fact that today I didn’t eat much between the gym and pickleball. Or the caffeine-esque concoction I had today (I don’t usually have caffeine; today was an exception). 

There’s something nice about feeling incredibly nervous and uncomfortable, yet feeling a calm sense of humor underneath. At no point was my inability to serve frustrating. Sure, it was bad. Yes, my teammate and the opponents assumed I lacked skill. (One guy called out that a serve that hits the kitchen line is short. I replied that I knew it was short: my confusion was whether the ball had hit that line or the side line. My teammate also took a bunch of middle shots with her backhand, a bad team strategy that’s clearly compensation for expecting a bad teammate.) Amusingly, the rest of my game was excellent: I just couldn’t do the simple bit! 

When you can’t do the most important part of the game properly, people assume you can’t do the other parts of the game well. 

After game 3, my serve came back. My shoulder felt loosened up. I bet it’s the gym. I rose from the ~sixth-best player on the courts (still true despite my bad serve, lol) to the second or third. 

All the while, I enjoyed. 

Nice! 

Heart > Hard

JulianLeave a comment

At the pickleball courts today, a boy of around 10 years old approached me to play. I asked for a moment to wrap up my phone call, then we began to dink. His paddle: cheap and shoddy. His shoes: poorly gripping. His name: Arturo. 

We dinked for five-or-so minutes, then shifted into a singles game. He tracked the score with the vigor of a boy who cares about winning. I won the first game 11-4. We switched sides. He adjusted very little to my play. I won the second game 11-2. We approached the net. I asked what he’d like to do: drill, play another game, etc. He wanted a rematch. I won 11-1. 

We left the court to grab water. The foursome on our neighboring court had just disbanded. One had gone home; the remaining three were looking for a fourth. They asked me to join. I asked if they needed one or two. They needed one. 

We played one game. I ran less than I had with Arturo. I also, tellingly, enjoyed the game less. Arturo’s big heart overshadowed his lacking skill. In this one doubles game, we played maybe one good point. One of the guys hit a lob and was shocked I could run back to return it. I jokingly called it a “senior passing shot”. He didn’t find it funny. 

After the game, I mentioned wanting to grab water. Then, at the benches, I asked Arturo if he wanted to play more singles. He did. 

We played another two games of singles (11-2 and 11-1, or perhaps one of those was 11-0; I don’t recall). Then Arturo asked if we should try to join the other pair practicing down at the end: turn it into a doubles game. 

We did. They agreed. 

This game was fun. Not a good game, but a good time. Arturo wanted to win. Skyler and Nick played their best. But Nick has played fewer than 5 hours of pickleball in his life. He rapidly became the target. 

The game was worse, but the play was still much better. 

We laughed. I called out Skyler for “Unfair surprisery!” when he served a ball that my partner Nick missed. Skyler retorted that Nick had asked him not to go easy. Nick replied that the ball had been too easy: that’s why he missed it. 

I’d rather play with a heartfelt crew than a group that takes it too seriously. 

It’s a game that shares its name with a silly vegetable. Games are fundamentally silly. Be silly. Have fun.

Adverse selection and dental decay

JulianLeave a comment

Adverse selection means the lower-hanging fruit is likely to be worse. If it’s more accessible and others have elected against it, there is usually some reason. Since most people desire similar qualities in their fruit, the remaining low-hanging fruit is likely to be worse. Thus, adverse selection. (It’s also why that shockingly-available parking space is more likely to be a red zone than an actual parking space, and why stock traders accepting deals without knowing why they exist are more likely to lose than win.) 

Today I went to the City College in Brooklyn for a free teeth cleaning. I scheduled the appointment with Daynef yesterday. She told me there’s a $20 facilities fee, but she’s happy to pay that for me. 

Today, after three hours, my teeth are no cleaner than they started. 

At 5:58pm, I arrived to City College. At 6:03pm, Daynef ushered me upstairs. At 6:10pm, I began filling out paperwork. From 6:17pm to ~6:40pm, we waited for a supervisor to review my paperwork. At ~7:17pm, Daynef began examining my face. At ~7:45pm, she began examining the inside of my mouth. At ~8:16pm, Daynef began measuring my periodontal depths. At 8:56pm, Daynef discharged me with a referral. She told me that, if I come back, they can do the actual cleaning and the xrays. 

I will not come back. 

If this were actually what was promised (a free cleaning, the only cost being that it takes 3hrs of my time instead of 1hr), I would be very happy. I downloaded a new audiobook today and haven’t yet established care with a new dentist (I recently moved, and my insurance is likely to change soon). But three hours for no cleaning is an abject failure. 

Yet again, Brooklyn disappoints.