Tag: Fiction

Hermit Crabs & Kidney Donations

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A spoken-and-transcribed guest-post courtesy of Partner, who caught upwards of seven hermit crabs today: 

Hermit Crab Homes

Hermit crabs grow, but their shells don’t, because hermit crabs don’t grow their shells but find them. When a hermit crab grows too big for a shell, it will find a bigger one. If the bigger one is too big for that hermit crab, it will just hang out near the shell, in the hope that some other hermit crab will come take that bigger shell and leave behind its shell. Because of this, you can get a whole line of hermit crabs: several smaller hermit crabs are waiting to size up their shell. As soon as a bigger hermit crab comes and takes that too-big shell, it will free up a slightly smaller shell, and then another hermit crab could take that slightly smaller shell, etc., trickling down. 

It’s like the kidney donation chain. 

The Kidney Donation Chain

If I wanted to give you my kidney, but you and I are not a match, we’d be out of luck unless there were two other people, one of whom wanted to donate and the other to receive, and we were a reciprocal match so could swap. But generally, there are so many factors required for a kidney to fit that a direct swap is improbable. And they only let something like two or three people form a loop because they want to operate all at once. They’re afraid that, if they do them sequentially, the buddy of the first person to get a kidney will renege on his donation at the end of the loop because his incentive to give is gone. 

Because of this structure, someone donating the kidney without needing a kidney for a friend or family member can change that loop from a loop into a line, which is really mathematically beneficial. And the altruistic donor is just giving away the kidney, no one’s on the hook for getting a kidney back to them, so there’s no risk of someone chickening out. If you choose to donate your kidney, you can kick off a chain that doesn’t just help the one person you are donating your kidney to, but can actually help all the people who exist in that chain, which can be a dozen people or more. 

BBC Earth video on hermit crab shell swaps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1dnocPQXDQ

Info on starting a kidney donation chain, including a way to get 5 loved ones to the top of the donation line if they ever need a kidney but you already gave yours away: https://www.kidneyregistry.com/for-donors/start-a-chain/

Finding My People

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Most of success is just showing up. But showing up to the right place… 

Before I moved to New York, I told my Partner that merely by living here, I’d find work. There’s so much economic opportunity in this city that I’d harness some.

One month in, I met a former founder who hired me to ghostwrite a blog post.

Three months later (two weeks ago), a random VC firm pinged me on LinkedIn about a private-markets mixer. I signed up. Yesterday, the organizer texted to make sure I was actually coming.

En route to the club, I noticed that I smelled. So I ducked into a CVS for deodorant. Not a good start.

I entered the club at 3:51pm. The doorman made me take off my hat. Getting worse.

At 4pm, the hosts arrived. They’d expected a room more suited to their needs: an open room, not a big table ringed with chairs. Rough continuation.

Upstairs, another host told me to take off my hat again. Ugh, come on. 

For the next 90 minutes, I met mostly people in wealth management and late-stage investing. Not my areas.

But then! Someone walked in with a pep in his step, someone I immediately pegged as Interesting. I snuck my way over. He grows hydroponic ginseng for a healthy soda company. He sold his last startup, a guitar-amplifier company. Now he wants to bring this healthy soda to the world.

And another! A guy doing video-based sabermetrics for sports other than baseball. And he’s complaining about marketing. These are my people. The ones I can help.

We exchanged emails. I’ll message them about coffee.

All in all, a very successful meeting.

If you show up as your specific self, you’ll meet the people you can actually help. 

Also, I ate 4 lamb lollipops, 2 falafel balls, and 1 small slice of fig pizza. I count that as a win.

Games Played

Me at the bathroom supply store: “Are you salaried or paid on commission?” 

Salesperson: “I’m not going to share that information.” 

Me in my mind: <Commission it is.> 

A Conservatory-Trained Beggar

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The goal of the game is to survive. You survive by earning a living. You earn a living by choosing the corner, not perfecting the song.

His sign reads “food for my baby and / my family can you help / me with a job / God bless you”, and hot damn can this guy play violin.

The last time I saw a violinist of such emotional expression, I located her on instagram, spotted she was recently married, and messaged her anyway to ask her out. She did not respond. 

This guy stations on Broadway between 88th st and 89th st, outside the shuttered retail store beside the Wells Fargo. He plucks. He strums. He fingers. He twangs. He draws a crowd.

The crowd contains a woman sitting on her walker, her caretaker, a woman of about 60 who offers me a tissue when she hears me sniffle, and Yours Truly. Not a bad crowd for a horrendous location.

Five children pass with their two adults. They stop. The male adult says “this is Mozart”.

When passing through Lisbon, I met a local trumpeter. He asked where I live. I told him New York. He loves New York. He can earn $800 or $900 per day in 3 or 4 hours of play, he told me. He played on the east side of Central Park, by the fountain where the summer sailboats swim.

This violinist, in 15 minutes, made maybe $5. $20 per hour is not the rate you’re looking for, my guy. You want a spot with greater throughput.

Just as musical skill does not determine a musician’s popularity, musicality does not determine a busker’s success.

A busker sells music. And like any retail in New York, location matters. But his store is even more tailored.

His sign asks for a job. He doesn’t need a job. He needs to make this one work.

He plays a few classical pieces, then a jewish one. He might know he’s on the Upper West Side (a Jewish hub). I wonder if he knows something I don’t know. I don’t think he does. But how would I know? 

I thanked him for decorating my space via a $3 venmo donation. I had just spent $3 on 18 ounces of blackberries. The least I can do is contribute an equivalent amount of thanks to him.

Hold up: he’s now looping. I’ve heard this song before. From him, like 10 minutes ago.

Are these his only songs? His only moneymakers? Does he loop the same 10-minute concert? That would be very New York of him. My first time living in New York, I donated to a guitarist in Central Park when he played a song of emotional resonance to me. I only realized when I returned the following day that he plays that same set on loop because my song has emotional resonance for everyone.

Most of the donations come from passers-by, not from the crowd. The crowd helps: without us, fewer would stop and listen. But this guy is good enough that he would grab attention even if I weren’t here.

Around 15 minutes in, the battery on his backing track died.

Location and preparation: not his strengths. Violin: absolutely.

I once spitballed with a friend the idea of A/B testing homeless beggar signs. What works, where, for whom.

The problem with that business, aside from the ethical qualms: an unreliable workforce. Data collection and reliable money collection: not good.

I wonder how much I could make as a beggar in NYC. If I cosplayed and A/B tested. What is a beggar but an emotional street performer? This violinist creates beauty. The beggar creates pity. A clown creates joy. French beggars prostrate themselves. American ones open doors to Dunkin Donuts in hopes of capitalizing on the reciprocity. 

I bet I’d enjoy A/B testing different begging in NYC. And by “begging”, I include street performing in general. Be a psychic one day, a debater another, a jokester a third.

The performer’s baby watches videos on a cell phone. Its mother (presumably his wife) swipes. The king’s kids just call him dad.

After the performance, the audience member with the tissue introduces herself as Vicky. Vicky tells me if she were eating the blackberries I was eating, she would have spilled them all over herself. I offer her a clamshell of blackberries. She declines. I tell her about my favorite fruit vendor, where they’re only $1 per 6oz clamshell. Vicky tells me the performer is conservatory-trained, from Venezuela. Everyone around her becomes successful, she says. She tells me the violinist used to play a block south. Now he’s here. Vicky asks for my information and I tell her about my trumpeter friend. I approach the performer to scan his Venmo. Vicky tells the violinist I have something to say. I ask him, through a translator: how did he choose this place? He tells me he lives in the Bronx. I say this street: how did you choose this street? He says by walking (which I interpret as arbitrary). I tell him that my buddy the trumpeter used to play at that location in Central Park and made $800 in 3-4 hours. Vicky says she’ll miss him.

I wonder if I’ll ever see him again. I’d like to. But if I don’t, is that better?

Flogging & Flourishing

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A beautiful experience and the shame that exiles it.

At Burning Man about 10 years ago, two friends asked if I wanted to join them for an intro-to-flogging workshop. I accepted. We trudged across the dusty playa to a tent filled with straps, crosses, benches, and massage tables: the sort of image you’d expect in a BDSM dungeon on TV, except all these were dusty and out in the open, not locked in some basement.

The leader started his talk. He’s a massage therapist, he said, and he thinks of flogging (and BDSM in general) not as an activity about pain, but as a massage with tools. Just as you can create physical experiences of excitement or relaxation or healing in someone’s body using your hands, so too can you create those experiences using tools.

Fair enough.

He asked for a volunteer, asked the volunteer if they had any sensitive areas or pain, and began to demonstrate. His demonstration started slowly: gently bringing blood to the surface, arousing some awareness of the area without any pain. It accelerated: increasing the intensity or the vigor or the speed (sometimes all three at once). He took the volunteer over her edge. She winced. He eased up, comforted her, ensured she felt safe, and continued. The key, he said, was that people have the capacity to go much farther than they believe. Sometimes, we just require a little help.

After the demonstration, an assistant asked us to pair up. The attendees were an odd number, so my group was a group of three: me and my two friends (a man and a woman who were romantically dating and would go on to marry around five years later). First, the man flogged the woman. Then the woman flogged the man. Then I asked the woman if she would like to be my recipient. She agreed. The man interrupted by telling me, “Actually, you’re going to be flogging me.” I did, then we switched, and he flogged me.

I loved it. Adored it. The experience of relaxed sublimity equates only to the perfect calm felt under a heavy blanket or, I presume, a cattle squeeze chute. If you’ve ever loved a hot sauna or a vigorous workout or the endorphins of a long run, you’ll probably like an expert flogging.

Most people don’t talk about this experience. When a BDSM-inspired scene comes on the TV, they avert their eyes or switch channels. We shame kink and the people who like it. No one who has ever been flogged could get elected president.

That makes me sad. Very sad. It was a beautiful experience with wonderful people, the sort of deep and connective touch we share too infrequently.

Thinking about that experience prompts a sad longing in me: the sort one feels when recalling a long-forgotten friend: our life paths diverged and a decade passed, but I would like to snuggle up with them again.

The $20 Locker

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Even when this city smacks me, I still see its beauty. 

I love New York’s reasonableness. 

Today I visited a Yankees game. The metal detector dinged on me when I passed. The bag inspector told me I can’t take a laptop inside. He summoned his teammate. His teammate pointed me to a business across the street. He said, “There’s lockers right across the street. They’re not affiliated with us but people use them all the time. When you come back, tell the security and they’ll let you skip the line.” I asked his name. He said Anthony.

The security guards moved the barriers as I shortcutted back through the zigzagging line. I sped across the street. Inside, the worker charged me $20 and ushered me to the back where the lockers live. I placed my laptop inside, pocketed the key, and told him “okay” when he said the locker rental ends 30 minutes after the game. I asked him his name. His coworker said “Ahmed”. He repeated “Ahmed.”

I spent $25 on the Yankees ticket. On one hand, $20 is expensive. On the other hand, the policies are reasonable at every step of the way. Can policy easily distinguish between a laptop and a recording device? Perhaps not. Is this policy public on their website? Yes. Did I check? No, but I could have and that’s my fault. Is there a reasonable solution to this problem? Yes, and it’s not $100 when it very well could be.

When I returned, I told the security guards that I had visited the lockers and Anthony told me to skip the line. My ticket buzzed in, and I retrieved my limited-edition Yankees soccer jersey. For which I paid an additional $10 over the cost of normal tickets. Not because I care about the jersey, but because my father was in town, and he’s always wanted to visit Yankee Stadium. 

Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can buy the ingredients. 

French Security: Worse Than Nothing

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Whatever they’re trying to do, they’re failing.

French security sucks. It’s worse than nothing. At least nothing wouldn’t delay tourists.

I approach the metal detector. I hand the officer my backpack. I walk through the detector. He hands me my backpack. Sounds like a normal security process. Except he never looked inside my bag.

Same thing yesterday at the Paris catacombs: at the end, a man seated at a desk with a sign saying open your bags so we can ensure you’re not stealing bones. But he doesn’t open your bags. He doesn’t even wave you on. He just plays on his phone.

Three months ago at a Parisian rugby match: the security officers pat down every entrant. Partner stayed in my line. The officer gestured her to a line with a female agent. Partner walked past him. He let her go.

At Orly Airport, you must navigate through all of the stanchions in sequence, even if the line is 0 people. An extra 60 meters of walking per person. One white-haired woman ducked under the rope. The officers yelled at her. She said, “I’m old, it’s hard to walk!” They demanded she go back.

The Louvre was heisted last October. Has nothing changed? Do none of the workers know the point of their jobs? Do none of them believe in their work? Are they too snoozy from the fondue lunch? (Author’s note: fondue is Swiss. But it does make me snoozy.)

What game is this?

The goal of the game is to win. I say that a lot. Sometimes too much. The goal of the game is to win; you win by doing X. But it’s pretty fundamental: if you’re not trying to win, what are you doing?

Sometimes the goal is different. Sometimes it’s to not-lose. Sometimes it’s to survive. Sometimes it’s to tie. But this security bullshit? Whatever it is, it’s not achieving it.

Even some contrived goal, like “create a specific form of job stability for a certain number of people in France without disrupting the general French living and working systems”, couldn’t you do that better? And that’s already super contrived.

The best rebuttal: fake security still deters. Which is fair. True. Like the faux eyes on the wings of a moth, the mere existence of security may prevent me from attempting to sneak a gun into the [insert grand French monument].

But fake security works when it appears real. If the moth has a sign saying “These are just mock eyes; I’m actually a helpless moth, teehee”, that bug is getting nommed. And today, at the Palais de Justice, a guard waves visitors through a body scanner. The alarm went off on the visitor behind me. The guard ignored it, clicked “Ok,” and waved the woman through. You can’t advertise the fakeness! Bluffing is one thing! This is bluffing while turning your cards face up!

Even I get it!

I don’t like security. I’m fully anti-TSA. Considering the rate of deaths by terrorist attack vs the rate of deaths by automobile crashes, I’m even pro-shrug-it-off re 9/11.

But even I understand the point of security. I get why we have it. I just think it’s dumb.

This version of security is the worst version! Not only does it have no impact; it also wastes people’s time! What the hell are you doing, France?!

Do you want to get invaded by the Germans for the fourth time in 160 years? Because you’re sure acting like it!

I’m Now a Pirate

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To guard your blind side, see it coming. You can’t. That’s the trouble.

At the Saturday market, the fruit vendor asked what happened to my eye. Surgery yesterday, I said. Then: “I’m now a pirate.”

He laughed. He handed us a banana and a peach for free, then offered a pair of melons for 5 euros. I said no. He said 3 euros. I said no. He said the French version of “come on.” I thanked him and said no. (I have one working eye, not one working braincell.) 

He totaled it up. Partner counted out the change. (We play a game when we’re about to leave a country. It’s called spend all the fiddly little coins. Yesterday I paid my rent in cents.) He held out his hand. I dropped the coins three inches closer than where his palm actually was. He tutted. “It’s new,” I said, about the eye.

Depth perception. One of the main benefits of binocular vision.

The costs since have been small and physical and easy to laugh at. I have to put medicated drops in the bad eye 3 times a day, and I can’t see well enough out of it to aim, so the eye can’t guide the drops that fix the eye. Tonight Paris Saint-Germain won, and Étampes spilled into the street to celebrate, and I caught about half of it. Partner walks on my left now so I can see her. I poked myself in the eye briefly when blowing my nose. None of it bothers me for more than a few seconds. The eye will heal in a week or two. I agreed to this difficulty. 

At the bakery, Partner said, “He’s staring at you. You should say some pirate things.” Or that’s what she told me later. She talks fast, and I don’t always catch her, so in the moment I missed it and bought my bread. 

Outside, she said, “How come you didn’t make pirate noises for the little boy? He’d have loved that.”

“Little boy?”

She laughed. “He was on your right side.”

That’s the blind one.

The drops, the coins, the half a celebration, the side she walks on now: Unlike things on my right side, I saw those coming. The boy, I didn’t see at all. A kid was standing right there, wanting a gift I was eager to share, and he’d picked the single spot where I’ve got nothing. I only know because Partner saw it and told me. 

Guess I’ll need a parrot for that shoulder. 

The Hand of My Dreams

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If the logic doesn’t follow, keep going. Don’t go back.

This actually happened earlier today: 

The Setup

Two guys had run out of money in the poker game. One of them – the host – had lost angrily. He was displeased with two other people at the table, and responsible for the other broke-guy’s buyin. The host said, “And if we’re down by $54 and we send $50, what will you do…” 

Then he told us, “You’ll take it and be grateful and not hound us for the other $4.” 

A while later – minutes or hours, I don’t know – the final three of us were playing double-handed omaha. 8 cards per person, split into two hands. The board was A99Q. I had AAxx in one hand for the over-full: the second-best possible hand. Even better: my two aces were both spades. 

The Opponents

The woman on my left – an Asian girl from my highschool – had KKxx for the kings-over full house. (The board now contained A99QK, with still the final card to be dealt.) In her other hand, she had 99xx for quads, but also definitely did not have quads. 

The woman on my right – a different Asian girl from my highschool – had 8cTcJc spread across her 8 cards, which went with the 9c, Qc, and Kc on the board to make a straight flush. Fortunately for me, the cards were separated across her hands so she didn’t actually have a straight-flush despite having the cards. 

The Accounting

We were already all in. I performed the accounting. The hundred-dollar chips were exhausted, so we used the silver bracelets each valued at $200. 

The pot totalled around $1500. We hadn’t all contributed equally. I wasn’t concerned since I had so much equity. 

The Broken Protocol

We agreed to run the river three times. 

We clicked my computer mouse to run the first river. It dealt an entire new board. We tried again. Same issue. I suggested we should use the same physical deck we were already playing with to run the river (duh!). 

The Showdown

I awoke.

Top-Secret Games: Trader Joe’s

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The goal of the game is to win the games. The hard part is noticing they exist.

I was in the Trader Joe’s in Santa Cruz, California, standing between two checkout lines. Both stations had a cashier. Neither line had people waiting. I was deliberately ambiguous about which line I was in.

A shopper arrived behind me. She asked which line I’d chosen. I answered slowly: whichever one finishes first.

She found this unacceptable. She appealed to the Trader Joe’s gods — that is, the cashier. The cashier ruled against me. You have to pick a line. I hemmed and hawed to buy myself time and picked. 

About two years later, I was shopping with a friend at that same Trader Joe’s. My friend performed the exact same hedge. A person asked which line we were in. My friend answered the same as I had. Once again The Gods smote us. So I stood in one line and she in the other. Whichever line finished first: our group re-combined there. 

It’s like the old saying: “Everyone is playing a game that you know nothing about.” 

Here are my Trader Joe’s games: 

The dual-line straddle. If you stand at the right angle between two lines, you can commit to whichever one moves faster. This is optimal play — it’s an option you should always exercise when the structure permits it. It’s also widely considered rude, for reasons that truly make no sense to me. I’m there first; I deserve to be served first. This is a queueing theory problem: one line is more fair, BUT people also feel more annoyed that they’re in a longer line. (And here’s the thing: the person directly behind me isn’t actually the one harmed by my slowness. The person farther back is — the one whose checkout would have opened up if I’d committed earlier. We’re all glaring at the wrong people.)

The tag-team shop. Often, I stand in line while Partner grabs more items. The line moves; I advance; she rejoins. We’ve doubled our throughput. In the US, this is fine. In France, it’s a violation — my sister once spoke to me in a bakery line outside Paris and the woman behind us made it clear: this is a faux pas. Different country, different rules. (And yes, it’s perfectly reasonable to permit joining, or to restrict joining, or to permit joining but without an item, or to permit a direct substitution of equal numbers of people for equal numbers of people / equal items for equal items. If you can think of it, I can justify it.) 

The end-of-line dash. Partner’s specialty. As we approach the register, Partner likes to make a mad dash for one final item. Discussing this game, she was the most beamingly radiant I’ve seen her in a while. It has all the traits of a good game: clearly-defined, time-pressured, skill-based, some luck to keep you on your toes, low-stakes if you lose. Sometimes she meets me after the checkout emptyhanded. Sometimes she brings the stracciatella we don’t actually need but ends up being delicious with a little honey and salt. That’s not the point. The point was the game.

Here’s the secret: Trader Joe’s is also playing a game.

Their queueing system isn’t optimized for throughput. There isn’t always a central queue, no take-a-number system, no signal from the register that they’re almost ready for the next customer (so the next customer can start walking). When I asked where the bathroom was, the employee walked me halfway across the store rather than pointing. They’ve decided their game is warm experience, not minutes per customer.

Which means the friction I keep running into at Trader Joe’s isn’t accidental. It’s the residue of a different optimization. They’re playing for one thing; I’m playing for another; the shopper behind me is playing for a third (presumably their personal, egotistical perception of fairness powered by a deontological backing of the inefficient rules of Trader Joe’s (because it sure as hell ain’t actual fairness; actual fairness means the first arrival gets to checkout first)). All three of us are right, given our games. We’re just not playing the same one.

Most disagreements about etiquette aren’t moral disagreements. They’re disagreements about which game everyone thinks they’re playing. 

In serious situations, I’ve heard people say, “I’m not here to play games.” 

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that they always say that angrily. 

The $10.125 Sandwich

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The goal of the game is selling sandwiches. You sell sandwiches by making it fun. You make it fun by taking fun seriously. 

I bought a sandwich today. The sandwich shop offers a cute promotion: from 3 to 6 pm, if you call a coin flip correctly, you pay half price. 

It’s fun, it’s attractive, and they net 75% of the normal retail price. 

But the experience is broken. 

First, you don’t pay until after the flip. So I, who sees loopholes without trying, am instantly aware that I could order the sandwich, flip the coin, and walk if it lands the wrong way. How would they even develop a process to stop me? I pay full price and then the flip determines my refund?

Second, the coin. It’s some B.S. commemorative coin — one side is the restaurant name, the other the logo — where neither side is obviously heads or tails. So the cashier has to tell me, and presumably every patron between 3 and 6pm, “this side is heads.”

Third, the flip. Less a flip than a half-spin. He calls it whichever way it lands in his hand. Not even the catches-it-and-slaps-it-onto-the-back-of-his-other-hand move that’s standard on any schoolyard.

What happened to the good ol’ quarter?
Why are we making this more complicated than it needs to be?
Why can’t the customer flip the coin onto the counter, where it would be easily visible?
Why not call the sides “name” and “logo” instead of heads and tails? 

The sandwich was good. It satisfied my basic need – fuel after the gym so I’m not grumpy. It wasn’t $13.50 good. It’s definitely $6.75 good. It’s probably also $10.125 good (the expected cost). 

Here’s what bugs me. The promotion could have been theater. A customer walks in, gets drawn into a small moment of drama, calls it in the air, wins or loses, laughs either way, tells their friends. Instead it’s a transaction with a dice roll bolted on. The cashier is phoning it in. The coin is wrong. The flip is wrong. The ritual isn’t a ritual.

The fun version costs them nothing. Same margin, same coin-flip odds, same sandwich. Just a real coin, a real flip, and a cashier who understands he’s running a tiny game show for thirty seconds a day. 

And sure, if there are people in line behind me, by all means do the quick version. But the main reason they’re doing this promotion at all is because they don’t have many patrons between 3 and 6pm. 

If they fixed it, I’d come back. If they fixed it, I’d bring people. The half-time half-price is nice; the experience could also have value. 

Also, I called heads and it landed tails.