Tag: Frameworks

Breaking down walls

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Today we started demolition. I’ve been so nervous the last few days. It’s not the work – it’s the communication. I knew the clock had started (we have a defined duration guarantee). They knew the clock had started. Still, I didn’t know they would actually knock down walls. But they did. And I’m relieved. 

One pro tip: show up at random times, unannounced. That way they never know when you’ll be there, so they always have to be working. The same tip applies to loved ones in a nursing home. They’ll want you to give notice. Screw that: this is my house; I’m going to show up whenever I feel like it. Not to harrangue or annoy you – always to be polite – but because I want to know what’s going on. 

Tomorrow we meet with the Big Honcho. My first agenda item: schedule weekly check-ins. He told me he generally visits his construction sites once per week. I’ll just schedule to be there when he is. 

Today we brought brownies. First day of construction work: start the relationship off strong. Tomorrow we bring more brownies to the in-office meeting. Might as well be friendly! 

Brownies are cheap. A healthy relationship is priceless. 

Society’s Awkwardness Impinges 

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At a two-year-old’s birthday party, the kids who spend time with their friends feel no awkwardness. Until the adults intervene. 

In the first case, one kid had a toy. The other kid approached and snatched it away. (It is, after all, his toy.) Neither kid cared. Until an adult said something like “share with her”… which created more tension. 

In a second case, one of the parents said “say happy birthday to X”. Immediately their druaghter became shy. She had been 0% shy the entire time. The formality caused a non-connective interaction. The “I-you” interaction became a “this formal entity executes a prescribed interaction with that formal entity”. 

When are you just doing? And when are you a formal form interacting with other formal forms? 

I suggest: doing is the most fun. The least self-conscious. The simplest. 

Formality is brought by top-down structures. And hot damn is it less fun. 

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Amusing quotes: 

Someone said to Partner as Partner walked down the street: “I hope yo face get better. Let me know who did it. I got yo back.” 

Who says New Yorkers aren’t kind?

Musing on Connective Tissue

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Imagine 10 or 100 people describe you, and their descriptions become a word cloud. Now take your word cloud, and compare it to other people’s.

Would we find that the people you spend time with have similar word clouds — similar descriptors, similar nouns about them? Does your cloud sit close to the clouds of the people near you? If so, in what ways alike, and in what ways different? (That’s graphing friend groups or political links in n-dimensional space according to personal traits, as a word cluster of noun descriptors of the person: clustering by cloud similarity and then drawing lines between the points based on social or political ties.)

My bet: people befriend and connect based on proximity. But the friend network is different than the leader. The map of who we like is not the map of who leads us.

Maybe “Yalie” is a noun about you, and a bunch of the people around you are also Yalies. Maybe most of the people you spend time with are quite tall — about the same height. But what about groups with diversities of traits instead: An office might cluster around Yalies but diversify by role: one person described “HR,” one described “accounting,” one described “CEO.” Some friend groups are all CEOs; other circumstances produce diversity. How does that work in an office? In politics? 

I wonder what they’d learn about politics. Is the most successful politician of a group the person who overlaps most with the rest of the group? I wouldn’t think the leader is necessarily the person with the most words overlapping others (because that person might miss a key trait, e.g. the desire to lead). Maybe the person who is friends with everybody is the one with the most in common with everybody. Or maybe the leader’s lowest commonality is higher than anybody else’s lowest (i.e. “The leader is nobody’s stranger.”). It’s got to be more complicated than that, depending on the group structure and incentives and the outsized impact of specific traits like desire for power.

Why I’ve been thinking about this: in a group that I interacted with today, the leader shares the most traits with the other group members. Each bloc shares one of her dimensions. Thinking about the descriptors of these different people and how she ended up being president: she is the person all of these different groups can agree on.

But often the leader of a group is not the leader because they have much in common with everybody, but because they plan things. That’s an interesting difference. The leader of a friend group is not the one most overlapping with others but more likely the one who organizes the events. In her case, part of it is she makes the thing happen — the leadership thing. This differs from the second-in-command, who doesn’t organize people, just makes the wheels run. Doing isn’t organizing.

Does anybody map social groups this way? A thing I’d be curious about: how do the friend network and the leader differ? The mapping half is studied — sociologists call it homophily. The gap between who connects and who leads is the fresher question.

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Games Played

The writers missed out by failing to name it, “The Devil Wears Prada 2: The Devil Still Wears Prada.”

New Slur

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“NPR taught me some new slurs” -Partner

A college partner and I wanted to create a new slur. We didn’t have a group we wanted to slur; we were simply linguistically inclined. 

We arrived at the percussive sounds: Ts and Ks. We developed the term “Tunk” (or “Tunq”). No coincidence that it shares phonemes with the word “Cunt”. 

Earlier today, Partner was listening to NPR. Apparently the word “Tonk” has become a slur for Latinos, alluding to the sound of someone getting hit on the head (presumably by a billy club). 

We were off by a vowel.

The 12 Steps: Not Just for Addicts

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Why should addicts get all the healing? 

I went to an AA meeting once to see what the fuss was about. A friend was going and invited me along. (It turns out the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. I drank for a few years in college, then realized I didn’t like alcohol, so I came along as a member.) The meeting piqued my curiosity but didn’t resonate with me. 

A few years later, I attended another Anonymous meeting of a different type. (A different friend was going.) Then a third type, another few years later. 

It’s shocking to me that the most impactful solution we have to a whole family of physical addictions is psycho-socio-communal-spiritual. That is to say: Alcohol is physically addictive. Why does making amends with other people help heal that addiction? 

The best doctors don’t treat symptoms. They treat causes. Addiction is self-medication. Anonymous meetings and the 12 steps work on that level. 

I don’t buy that you have to do every step of the 12 steps in order. If order were mandatory, I wouldn’t do them at all. I think each step has a key trait (or traits) that, when satisfied, does the healing. Ben Franklin did a moral inventory before AA was ever invented. 

Today I started my step 4 personal inventory. I spent 45 minutes jotting up areas in my life in which I feel angry and unable to let that anger go. I’m “hung up on it”, as the kids in 1972 might say. 

This is to say I’ve admitted I have a problem (just not in that way). A set of problems. A set of regrets that pop into my mind and which cause me to psychologically spasm with deep and profound regrets. 

So, without any obvious addiction that’s sent me to rock bottom, I’d like to do the steps. Specifically step 4 and step 8. 

Step 4: “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” 

Step 8: “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.”

I think that, to do step 8, I may also need to do part of step 5 (“Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” [I’m not sure the God part is important. The self and other human may be.]) 

16 months ago, I noticed something I felt a profound regret about. I jotted up a letter to that person in an attempt to mimic these steps (well, technically sending the letter is step 9). I shot it their way. They responded positively. I feel much better now. 

Today, I took step 1. Er, step 4. I skipped step 1. I’ll be the first to admit that’s not a problem.

Don’t Mess with Transit 

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How Houston missed the bus. 

A man with a hand cast approaches Partner in the Houston light rail. He points at her and points at himself as if to say “we’re both injured!” 

His opening line: “are you a believer?” 

Partner grunts, “Catholic”. 

He tells her that Jesus will take care of her. See: he prayed and his hand doesn’t hurt. 

— 

Houston is a car-based city. The light rail only navigates along a few specific stretches. Therefore the main people who use the light rail are those who don’t have cars. The selection effects mean the light rail users are mainly poor or homeless. It’s the highest proportion of people talking to themselves or yelling arguments at the empty air that I’ve ever seen. 

So what? 

So it’s a little bit of a spiral to the bottom. The New York City subway definitely has more total homeless or poor or ghost-yellers than the Houston light rail. But the proportion in Houston dwarfs that of New York. And it feels – at least to me – much less safe.  I wonder whether that causes it to only attract those without other options. So it attracts fewer riders – and fewer affluent and influential riders. And therefore the service doesn’t expand? 

Houston doesn’t necessarily need a better light rail. The buses also work well enough, if you’re okay standing in oppressive heat for fifteen minutes. But it’s a notable trait of infrastructure: if you don’t invest early enough, you’re generally better off waiting for the next paradigm. The US is a car culture. Next up: personal helipads? 

—

And a funny quote from Partner: 

“You know what’s the funniest part of BTUs? The Brits don’t use air conditioning.” 

How not to stare

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The cashier at the Family Dollar looked me dead in the eyes throughout our interaction. He asked how my day was and wished me a pleasant evening. He made the sort of jokes that a cashier does to a beloved customer. His pep was, dare I say, manager material. 

The whole experience would have been a perfect example of customer service… 

If Partner hadn’t been beside me. 

See: Partner’s swollen lower face currently makes her resemble a bullfrog. And her nose emits a long white tube that dangles down to a safety pin clipped to her shirt. 

After we left, I asked Partner: “Did he ever make eye contact with you?” 

She said no. 

That was my guess too. 

The guy wasn’t only being friendly to me.
He was covering for his discomfort re Partner. 

When someone looks grotesque, we’re taught not to stare.
That’s a fine starting point, but it misses the purpose.
If Partner always looked like this, staring would be preferable.
This was worse: this was dehumanization. 

Right now, Partner doesn’t mind: She knows she looks weird, but she’s still a human.
Her grotesqueness feels to her like a costume she will soon take off.
But if you were always treated like a non-human, how long would it take for you to doubt it? 

Top Secret Games: Hospital Edition

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(Fourth in the Top Secret Games series, after Trader Joe’s, Airport, and Bathroom Line)

  1. If you need immediate assistance, press the “Nurse Call” button and yell “Explosive Diarrhea!”. Someone will come running. This one is especially helpful if you’re hooked up to wires. (This game was told to us by the nurse herself. Never used, but helpful to have in one’s back pocket.) 
  2. If you’re in severe pain and your nurse hasn’t come by in ~2 hours, ring your “Nurse Call” button. The charge nurse will ask what you need. Stay silent. Someone will come immediately. (Also not actually used, but hypothesized to be quite effective.) 
  3. X-ray tech will show you pictures if you’re cool. They also say you’re good to go to the local aquarium with a nasogastric tube. 
  4. There is popcorn in the lobby. They do not have a port for nasogastric tubes. But they will laugh with you when you make the joke. 
  5. If you’re short, children with cancer will think you’re a child and give you a half-wave acknowledgement. Facial swelling and a nasogastric tube might have helped here. 
  6. The home health care people will set you up so you can buy a bunch of stuff. OR, if you ask, the nurse will just grab you the stuff anyway, seemingly for free. 

A Self-Fulfilling Competence

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A belief in my competence helps create my competence. 

I often experience the following while traveling: “did I bring X?” 

Then I assume I did not bring X. So I don’t look for X. So I don’t get the benefit of X despite the fact that I did in fact bring X! 

This structure – and mainly the assumption – creates a downward spiral of incompetence. In reality, however, the issue is not one of competence but one of perceived competence. If I accurately recalled that I had brought the item, I would instead pat myself on the back, reinforcing the positive behavior. 

So how do I overcome this spiral? Note when I succeed? Question the times when I assume I have failed? Something else? 

[Ironically, after writing this, I misplaced the exact item that I had written this post about. 😂]

Brass Booooooooooo-rmingham

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Like a low opinion, not like a ghost. 

Today, a friend taught me the board game Brass Birmingham. There’s one rule in the game – the rule that you can sell any and all of your items in one fell swoop – that I forgot. And my friend mentioned it specifically! During his beginning explanation, he had specifically said, “The first few times we played the game, we got this rule wrong.” 

And the explainer video had mentioned it. 

And I just… forgot. 

It was a pivotal rule. I would have played entirely differently. 

The culprit? 

  1. Me. I was told: fair play. 
  2. The tiny little reference card that the game gives each player. If they phrased the card differently, it would be obvious! 

I used to playtest games. I don’t know how this one slipped by them. A simple rephrasing would have changed the whole game. 

In a game that’s essentially just minutiae, way to tank the whole thing. 

Harrumph. 

I didn’t like this one rule mistake. I liked the rest of the game. In a large, intricate system, one small mistake can sink the ship. 

(Apparently, in reprints they have rephrased it. Grumble grumble.) 

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Also, a humorous exchange while Parnter and I packed up our apartment ahead of renovations: 

Me: “Our relationship is really grating on me.”

Partner: “Our relationship is really great!”

Communication is the key to all good relationships.