The blog home of Jeff Putz

I'm still pursuing my lighting education endeavor, but it definitely comes in spurts (giggidy). A couple of weekends ago I modeled my office in Vectorworks, along with the half-dozen lights that I own. What's neat about that is that I can import the model into the console, and the software can "listen" to the output of the console and visually render the output. In other words, what happens on the computer is what happens in the office. That's not as fun, but still.

So the next step is to build out a virtual rig with a bunch of fixtures that cost $10k each on trusses, and once I have that, I can program stuff against it. I obviously can't outfit an arena with the real thing, so this allows me to try and be creative as if it were for real. I don't know that there's anything exotic I can really do, as most big shows these days are several rows of lights at various heights, kind of surrounding the "box" over the stage. Sometimes they're curved or circular trusses. More and more, there are a lot of video components, which I could get into, but that feels like a secondary skill. I could create video patterns in After Effects, and use those as the basis for pixel mapping across a rig. That could be fun, and frankly a shortcut to trying to figure out the math patterns to otherwise make it do stuff.

I've watched a lot of videos of various shows, and I've noticed the EDM people mostly just try to blast you with seizure-inducing mayhem across hundreds of fixtures. Understandably, those shows don't exactly have a lot of dynamic range or subtlety in the music, so I guess that makes sense. Pop and rock seems to have more interesting stuff, and a lot of it even, wait for it, attempts to illuminate the artists. And then there's more quiet genres that mostly intend to create a mood, not a light show. The best thing that I've seen in person lately was Lindsey Stirling's Duality tour last year. That was legit.

I'm having fun with it still, but again, I haven't played consistently. I still find myself having to relearn things that I thought I already knew how to do.

I watched the two-hour-plus podcast hosted by Doctor Mike pitting a doctor who is peddling "clean organic no chemical" junk against scientist Dr. Andrea Love, regarding the misinformation being spread by a legion of influencers and conspiracy theorists, and worse, those selling "wellness." The clinician wrote a book that asserts we should be eating only "organic" food and that "chemicals" are probably bad for us. Dr. Love points out that there is no evidence at all that this is true. Absolutely zero. In fact, much of this "wellness" industry makes claims that aren't real at all, and not backed by any scientific consensus. The result is that people are buying into the nonsense and spending a ton of money on things they don't need to spend on.

This is particularly problematic coming from a board certified doctor, because they're supposed to deeply understand science. It's bad enough that so many people are calling into question the expertise of experts, but here's one that should be an expert. A massive percentage of people who buy into this stuff, and especially the "influencers" and personalities that sell it, tend to lean into the wrongness because that's how they explain things that they don't understand. It's the same phenomenon that conspiracy theorists suffer from. If you're unwilling to trust experts, or attempt a deeper understanding of science and history, you can "explain" things by making them up.

The playbook is pretty universal as well, and extends to the people who sow doubt in government and other institutions. They all insist that they're "just asking questions." They say they're doing their own "research." Both of these claims are actually legit if you are in fact genuinely curious and open to being wrong. But when you instead move toward conclusions that are not based on empirical data and observation, you're doing it wrong. As a result, misinformation flows freely, unabated by actual facts.

Take for example the subject of that podcast. The book author's core tenet that organic is better is based partly on the idea that organic food doesn't use pesticides. It's widely assumed that this is true. It is not. They use chemicals found naturally as pesticides, only without the rigorous scrutiny that synthetic pesticides undergo. Something found in nature isn't necessarily better or safer. I mean, arsenic is a naturally occurring chemical, but too much of it is definitely going to kill you. Even excess water can kill you.

And then there's the fear of GMO's. You know how many people in history have been hurt by GMO's? Exactly zero. You know how many people survived famine with GMO's? Likely a billion.

So if you see stuff about "detoxification" and "clean eating" and organic avocados, it's probably bullshit. Spending money on that is a waste. Ask any reputable dietitian. The cheaper vegetables are still good, healthy food. Vaccines still don't cause autism either.

The title is really the whole post. It's where we find the meaning in our life.

So why is it so hard to figure out?

I went to a screening and Q&A with Kevin Smith last weekend, showing Dogma for its 25th anniversary. He recently wrestled the rights away from the Weinstein's, so it will enjoy a theatrical rerelease and presumably streaming and home video reissues.

Smith is an excellent story teller, and if you've ever seen him live, then you know that translates well into his appearances. We saw him coming out of the pandemic, and he was good then as well. This time around, he shared some great stories about Alan Rickman and George Carlin. I've heard him talk about Carlin before, but it was interesting to hear about Rickman, and the friendship that he had with him, without realizing it was a friendship until he passed. Understandably, he felt like his "dopey" movies were not up to big time actors like him. That's kind of Smith's m.o. though. To hear him tell it, he's just happy to be here and make movies with his friends. And that's largely what he's been able to do, mostly on his terms. He found a way to do this through podcasts and tours and such. He's made his own future outside of the traditional Hollywood scene.

And yes, he definitely made some dumb movies, but Dogma still lands pretty well. The dialog is rich in deep cuts of Biblical stuff. Despite protests back in the day, I don't find it particularly negative toward Christianity, or any religion. Smith made the point that the movie captures his beliefs when he was "a kid," but for the most part he doesn't really lean into religion anymore.

His core movies, the Clerks trilogy, Chasing Amy and this one, are pretty great. I never really got Mallrats. Red State was what I would call his "Tarantino" movie, and generally better than people give it credit for. But sure, Tusk and Yoga Hosers are not really very good.

I admire the guy. He's a movie nerd that always knew what he wanted to do, and he's largely done it on his terms. He was doing selfies in the hall on our way out (he had to go into a later screening for Q&A), just kind of hanging out. No entourage, no one else around. He seems relatively grounded, and since going vegan post-heart attack, and later quitting weed, he seems to really enjoy what he does. It's still weird to see him so thin.

I've written a few times about how the medicinal properties of marijuana, or THC specifically, have helped me a great deal. For years I struggled with insomnia, probably related to anxiety, and 5 mg of THC via a gummy has largely solved that problem. Unexpectedly, it also treats my restless leg problem. I've never been formally diagnosed with that, but I know that I don't have it when I'm taking the THC. Diana uses it for back pain management, which is especially useful since the conventional pain killers have not been good for her kidneys. There's a lot of potential upside, but we don't really know what the negatives are, because they haven't been studied.

I was thinking about this because I'm in Colorado at the moment, where recreational THC in all its forms is a thing, and it's everywhere. There are four dispensaries within four blocks of my hotel. Because of the federal status, I can't fly across state lines with my gummies. The least I can do almost anywhere is 10 doses of 10 mg, which sucks because I need only 15 mg total for three nights. It's cheaper here than in Florida, but it's still a little wasteful. Also, the brand that I bought sucks, such a weird texture compared to what I get at home. That's the Wana brand, by the way. They're delicious and don't taste like weed. Unfortunately it's been raining, and the nearest store here is too far away.

One of the things that varies so wildly with product is potency. If you like to smoke it, who knows what you might get. Growers have worked hard to breed more potent strains. But even for edibles, it varies wildly. Even for the brand that I like, the real dosages are between 8 and 9 mg per gummy, and when you're only using half of that, that's a lot of difference. The batch I got here was about 10.8 mg, which is almost 30% more than what I'm used to. Again, I'm not a heavy user, and not trying to get high. The most I've had in an awake situation is that 8.something, and honestly, I don't really like the feeling. It's not like being drunk, but I can't explain why. Maybe it's just the difference in familiarity.

Where I'm going with this is that if it was legal, we could see a lot more precision in how it's regulated consistently, especially as it relates to potency. If you make an alcohol product, the ATF will fuck up your business if you don't exactly land the proof that you're selling. With THC products, there is no uniform scrutiny in that respect. And I understand, when you're dealing with plants, variability is impossible to control. But it seems weird that it isn't more consistent in every other form of THC, including edibles, tinctures and vapes. That's a lot of chemistry.

Again, I have to point out that it's not like alcohol. Alcohol is essentially poison. There is no evidence that it provides any health benefit, despite the longstanding myth about red wine having some benefit. There is, however, a ton of evidence that THC can be beneficial for a range of health issues. It might also have negative long-term effects, but we can't study that with the rigor that we can with legal products. I know it helps me, but I want to know that it isn't going to cause harm, or that the risk is relatively low. We also don't know what percentage of people will find it addictive, but it's a non-zero number, and I'm sure it's higher than clinicians would prefer.

The feds need to reclassify. I realize we have bigger problems right now, but a healthy government can do more than thing at once. (If only we had a healthy government.)

About seven years ago, we bought a robot vacuum from Neato. We actually used it up and downstairs, with two docks. It worked fairly well, though to use it downstairs, you really had to invert all of the dining chairs (that's 12, including the counter), which was a deterrent to using it. The reason you had to do this is because, despite having a spinny laser or something to map the surroundings, it mostly ran into everything over and over. We used it less and less over time, and then its battery died. I replaced it, but also learned at that point that the company went out of business, and they would be shutting down their servers eventually. That's the problem with "smart" stuff... it stops working when it can't phone home. Then a few weeks ago, it died hard. It shut itself down.

I still like the idea of a vac bot, so I looked around to see what was hot. The tech reviews had all of the usual suspects, but various online forums and Reddit were all about this Roborock brand that I had not heard of. That seemed odd, but I suspect many reviews only happen if the vendor gives the writers a sample. I started looking at the suction measurements and such, and Roborock seemed pretty great. Then one of the better midrange models, normally $800, was half-price (they go well over a grand), and that seemed like a good deal.

The software is pretty great. The app allows you to "rope off" parts of the map and delineate rooms, so you can choose specific areas to do. Most importantly, it doesn't bang into stuff all day, especially when it knows where stuff is. The device itself uses rubber brushes, which is interesting, and they seem to do a really good job. The dust chamber could be bigger, but when it does get overfilled, it struggles to empty into the dock. It uses disposable bags in the dock, which isn't great, but not the end of the world. Overall, I'm really impressed with its performance. I do wonder if it will have longevity, because it needs the cloud service. I mean, I've had the same upright Dyson for 20 years, and will probably have it my whole life.

Our carpet sure sucks though. The Pulte builder-grade crap looks like a dozen people have lived here for two decades, and it's just the three of us over seven years. It needs to be replaced, but there's kind of a with a weird economy I'm not sure now is the time. That, and when do we downsize and move out? I assume that better carpet should at least look good for five years.

One of the weird things about politics is that there seems to be a resistance to changing your mind. In fact, it seems to be a badge of honor to double down on something over time, even when evidence shows you're wrong.

A classic quality of a bona fide scientist is the ability to take on more data until you can prove or disprove a theory that you're testing. I would say that some are thrilled by a negative outcome, because now they can talk about something with more certainty either way. For aspects of everyday life, I imagine that this can be harder, because we're emotional creatures. Still, I may be disappointed when something that I hope is true turns out not to be, but I'd rather have that over constant engagement of cognitive dissonance.

This phenomenon of doubling down seems to get worse as people age, which logically is the opposite of what I would expect. As we get older, we have more experiences, we take on more information. I enjoy learning new things, and take pride in living a life of constant learning. I've also tried to be comfortable with what I don't know, in no small part because my step-father insisted that he knew everything, and I resented that. I do my best to try and see the world through a lens of discovery and wonder, because it still surprises me.

I'm starting to feel though that I am not typical. I mean, I know I'm not neurotypical, but again, it seems like this is the way we should operate as we get older. But I look at how Boomers have tended to lean significantly conservative, and that surprises me. When I say "conservative," I'm not really referring to a cohesive ideology as I am a tendency to get stuck in a certain way of thinking. It would seem to me that, at that age, they would all be more open to literally everything that isn't comfortable. They have more data.

When I am talking about an ideology, in the political sense, yes, I'm talking about the belief that immigrants are bad, people of other religions are bad, queer people are bad, people of color are bad, and all of those groups collectively threaten their way of life. When thinking critically, of course we can quantify why none of that is true, and when you remove the critical thinking, you're usually only left with some combination of hate and mistrust.

The hate and mistrust is just as surprising as the inelastic mindset. I can't imagine being in my 70's or later spending any energy on hating anyone. I can't do it now, I certainly don't want to when I have less time left!

Most of these areas of conservatism seem to be about cultural issues. I've always considered myself as politically moderate, which is to say skeptical of both parties, and not at all interested in the cultural stuff because it does not affect me, and I'm not interested in negatively affecting anyone in those marginalized groups. It's bizarre to me that such a sentiment is considered "liberal." If caring about other people is liberal, I'd love to readjust that expectation to making it about being human.

In any case, I want to continue changing my mind. But I can only see one logical conclusion in that process... I will continue to want to care about people and advocate that they live free of the marginalization that is the focus of half of Americans now. Because so far, new information only confirms that marginalizing groups of people does not benefit me, and throughout human history it has not improved our outcomes. It has, objectively, caused only worse outcomes.

Sunday morning, as I was loading up stuff for our water park visit, I noticed a mess of black rubber bits behind the car. I quickly realized that they were from the rubber seal on the bottom of garage door. Something tried to eat its way out of the garage and failed. I've gotta see if I can find a replacement before the next hurricane, because we've never had any water intrusion on those doors, and I don't want to start now.

On Monday, something started to stink in the garage. It can get to be a hundred degrees in there when the morning sun is pounding on those doors. I just assumed that it was something in the garbage. Generally we don't produce enough garbage to be a problem, but now and then something makes it out there. I didn't think much of it, until Diana pointed out that we had not put anything in there yet for the week. We assumed that whatever ate the garage door died somewhere in the garage. If only it were that easy.

When Diana and I went out for lunch on Tuesday, I caught a whiff of the stink in a parking lot. I was pretty convinced at that point that the dead thing was in the car. Leaving it outside of the garage confirmed this. Gross. On the plus side, there isn't much under the hood of a Model Y. Once you take off the frunk liner, you'll see the radiator mounted diagonally under it, the heat pump and AC bits, the 12V battery, and if you have a dual motor, the front electric motor. There isn't much to the inside of an EV. I spent a good hour poking around, but couldn't find the dead thing. The one spot I couldn't easily see was on top of the scrape plate underneath, but removing some of those annoying plastic push pins under the bumper and a few bolts, I could get it loose enough to see all of it. Nothing there.

Two days went by, with the car in the driveway. I pulled out the stuff again today, and I could tell by the intensity of the smell that it was on the driver's side. Then, I just happened to notice some gray fur in a small gap between the frame, the washer fluid tank and a wire harness. I can't believe that I missed it after looking as much as I did. Worse yet, I know the thing was inches from my nose. No wonder I felt sick after looking the other day.

I couldn't easily remove the tank without removing the wiper arms and motor, and the arms annoyingly require a special tool, per the service manual. That's disappointing considering how easy everything else is to get to. Not that I'd try to service an EV, because the electrical bits scare me, but it's a relatively simple machine otherwise. What I could do is remove the feeding part of the tank, and then removing a screw and a nut, I could tilt the tank up enough to grab the rat with tongs. Well, I could with help.

To get leverage, I climbed in the compartment, standing on the aluminum cross-member so I could pull up on the tank in the space I had. Diana and her smaller hands, equipped with a nose plug and my favorite grilling tongs, reached in there and grabbed the bugger. It was in bad shape already, with much of the head and chest rotting. The tail and rest of its skin was still very whole, so I imagine it would have taken weeks for it to rot into oblivion. Gross. And no, I didn't take a photo of it. It's in my front lawn for the scavengers if you wanna go look.

I sprayed some bleach in there and have left it open to air out for awhile. On the plus side, it was never in a place that brought the smell inside, and it's a well-sealed cabin. Diana's newer model has the bioweapon defense mode with the gigantic filter, but even this one has a solid filtering mechanism, and the intake is away from where the critter was. Hopefully it dissipates enough to leave it in the garage tonight.

For the most part, the US, and much of the world, has enjoyed a reasonable amount of economic stability since the pandemic. Unemployment has been low, inflation has been in retreat, the markets have been very robust. Sure, there have been some stubborn things like certain commodities, while other things like gas have technically been below the rate of inflation. But despite the rhetoric of the last election cycle, the economy was enjoying a net positive direction.

Then we elected a petty felon into the White House that has in just a few short weeks destabilized everything.

The retirement accounts that I've worked so hard to build up have lost 12%. If a recovery doesn't happen of the same scope, I can expect to wait two more years before quasi-retiring. With all of the chaos, many companies and individual consumers have pulled back to a place of caution. We may end up in a recession that is completely self-inflicted. Anyone really willing to think things through in November said to expect this, but even I figured the machines would keep running and mostly we'd be dealing with civil rights problems.

And for what? Tariffs are not a tax on other countries, the buyers of their products pay for that. Coupled with third grade supply and demand understanding, it should be pretty obvious how this doesn't benefit anyone. Yet the MAGA cult is insisting everything is fine, despite being the very people who believed that the economy sucked. Now that it's actually in danger, they're convinced it's not.

If people start watering plants with Gatorade, I'm out. (Movie nerds get this.)

The housing crash in 2008 hosed me pretty bad, because that was the only significant asset that I had. The win was that I had time to regroup and be a little more responsible with my finances. But setting myself up for a happier third act requires housing values to stay where they are, reasonable inflation and a market that consistently can return 6% or more annually. Housing demand isn't softening, so hopefully that hangs on, but the markets are scary and tariffs will absolutely drive up inflation. I'm a middle-class guy doing all of the right things and playing the game, so I imagine the future looks even scarier for people who are not as well off. They deserve the chaos even less.

The thing that I tend to think about on Earth Day every year is the transition to sustainable energy and transportation. That starts with the electrification of cars. When we started with a Nissan Leaf in 2014, even with the limited range it was pretty obvious that it was workable. The next year we got the Model S, and began driving all over the east coast in a fully electric car. While the cost was absurd, it did prove that the technology existed even then for a long-range, fully electric car. For nearly a decade now, we've been without gasoline. I can't imagine ever going back. It's extraordinary to have home be your "gas station."

Back then, only a fraction of a percent of cars sold in the US, and indeed the world, were EV's. Today, it's globally expected to be nearly 1 in 5, and here in the US, 1 in 10. In Norway, an enormous country that gets very cold, they're nearly at 90% electric for new cars. What makes it especially great is that there are so many options now, and nearly all can use the nearly ubiquitous Supercharger network. I still maintain that public charging isn't that important, but it seems to be the biggest hangup that non-EV owners have. (We haven't used public charging in about two years.) There are still anecdotes people put up about why they "can't" go electric, but other than the cost, which still starts in the low $40k range, I don't think that most of the reasons are particularly valid. I mean, there are Uber drivers putting 100k miles on EV's per year now.

The cost difference is interesting, because the cost to drive is less than a third than if we were buying gas. Diana has driven about 14,000 miles in the last year, using about $600 in electricity (some of which generated by our solar plant). Assuming a gas version of her car could get 25 mpg, and gas averaged $3.20 per gallon, the gas cost would have been about $1,800. So even assuming our entire draw was from the grid, even though it's more like 45%, over five years the fuel cost savings is $6,000. Maintenance cost is less too, with no oil to change, and brakes that effectively never need to be replaced.

I wish the transition was going faster, but Norway shows that it's largely a matter of will. It is our future, and not a question of if, only when.

Oh, and our solar has produced nearly $14,000 in electricity in seven years. That puts us on schedule for a 10-year return on investment.

The HHS secretary, RFK Jr., doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to, well, probably anything, which is par for the course for Trump's cabinet. But he's really talking out of his ass when it comes to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). That's personal, for obvious reasons. Simon was diagnosed at 3, I was diagnosed in midlife. It has not "destroyed families" or any other such nonsense. Has it made life more challenging? In some respects, yes, but this is less about the condition than it is the world at large.

So here are some truths to share.

• Vaccines don't cause autism. Same with "toxins," which is a meaningless word used by people who don't understand middle school science. They are willingly ignorant. This has been researched at scale for years.
• Autism is not the character in Rain Man. It can be, but that's a caricature and stereotype. Because...
• The DSM refers to autism as a "spectrum disorder," which is a way of saying that the scope and effects vary wildly from one person to the next. It says that "impairment" is a requirement of diagnosis, but it's more of a "neuro-type."
• If you know someone with autism, you know one person with autism. While there are some commonalities between any two people, the next two may be completely different.
• Autism diagnoses are increasing because we're looking for it. No one was looking for it when I was a kid, thus the midlife diagnosis. It's particularly encouraging that minorities and the poor are getting more access to expertise.
• And because it's so broadly defined and underdiagnosed, the statistics around it are borderline useless. For example, government data just a few years ago suggests that only 5% of autistic adults lived independently. This is of course not true... most are just not diagnosed.
• Autism rarely is a thing by itself. It is often found along side of ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, etc.
• While difficulty with social interaction is common, I would argue that often the problem isn't autistic wiring, it's the arbitrary social contracts we have to navigate.
• ASD is described as a developmental disorder, and this is why some people struggle to communicate or reach certain milestones. This does not mean that they are unintelligent, it means that their functional wiring is different.
• I believe that while a "disorder" can impair a person's ability to function in society, again, like the social contracts, sometimes it's just that the world's default mode doesn't accommodate the differences. Nowhere is this more true than in school.
• To expand on that, I don't like to consider it a disorder for me, because despite the challenges, it stands to reason that it has been an asset in other ways.
• Online communities of autistic people appear to me to be incredibly dysfunctional, which kinda makes sense given the differences. There are a varying opinions about whether or not this is something we should consider a part of our identity. And don't even get started on the nomenclature itself.
• Environmental conditions can be difficult for some, but not everyone. Sound, light, smells, food, surface textures... these can all cause discomfort.
• People will talk a lot about coping mechanisms, which are skills that make it possible to exist in a world not optimized for us. It doesn't mean that the person is any more comfortable in the situation.
• Do not ever use the terms "high functioning." That is not a diagnosis. It is not in the DSM. It's a term invented mostly by affluent white people who want to trivialize the diagnoses of their children, or worse, throw shade at the kids who really struggle. I equate this to saying something racist. Close second is using the term "normal."

I'm sure there are other things, and I don't want to pretend that I'm a spokesperson for ASD. Yes, there are people like those you see in these (borderline exploitive) reality TV shows that can't be very independent. That's why it's weird to lump everyone together in one category. I suspect that if you screened the entire population, the diagnosis rate would be two or three times higher.

With that said, I've kind of had a mental list of things that, in retrospect, make it more obvious to me that I would have been diagnosed as a child if anyone was looking for it.

• I apparently would not walk in sand as a very young child, something my mother seemed to hold against me well into adulthood. That's a texture thing. Simon struggled with it at first, too. Now we both enjoy getting beat up by the ocean waves.
• I am to this day a very picky eater. It's part of the reason that I don't force the issue with Simon, who frankly is more willing to eat certain vegetables than I am. In adulthood, I have been able to lean into some kinds of Asian fusion and Indian food, fortunately. I love curry.
• I still remember the most epic meltdown ever that I had in fifth grade. The details are unimportant, and I remember a lot of things when I was young, but the feelings around that were so strong that they stuck with me.
• I always struggled socially in school, and it only got a little better in college. I also tended to gravitate toward adults, and I'm grateful for those who indulged my social efforts. I'm convinced that they changed the outcome of my life. It's why I'm hostile toward adults who won't give Simon the time of day.
• The cost of conforming to social norms is total exhaustion. Any time I've had to interview in person, the eye contact just kills me. And I think about the time that I went to every radio station in Cleveland, dropping off audition tapes looking for a job. On one hand, my lack of filter let me do that, but the actual interactions with receptionists and a few actual program directors was hard. I vividly remember sleeping for 12 hours that night.
• Indeed, I've talked about the speed of my mind, the thought spirals, and how it goes everywhere, all of the time. How do you escape your own mind?
• I need tactile feedback more than I realized. I used to do more harmful things like pick my toenails until they bled, made worse with #floridalife and no shoes or socks, but these days I find solace in the texture on my laptop, or pushing off the corner of my phone case with my thumb.
• My aversion to clubs and bars in my 20's is clearly my aversion to crowds. It's why I'm hesitant to go to shows and why I don't want to be at theme parks when they're extra crowded.
• I am very sensory averse in very specific ways. I remember feeling nauseous as a kid at the smell of bacon (another thing often dismissed by parents), and that's still a thing. Sometimes noisy environments for me feel like the audio equivalent of being in a room with strobe lights that never stop. In January I had to leave a restaurant.
• I'm insanely impatient with anything illogical. And let's face it, that's much of the world right now. It affects my relationship with my child, who does not optimize things the way that I do. It frustrates me at work with meetings and ceremony that have no demonstrable value. And of course, politics.
• I do find safety in routine, but struggle to find routine in things that would be beneficial, like exercise.
• At the same time, I also crave new experiences. Admittedly, this wasn't previously a thing. Moving to Seattle forced that function, now it's a constant. I need new music all of the time. I want to see more of the world. I got a couple of tattoos, and I'm open to more. I imagine this is the most anti-autistic thing about me, but point it out because it reinforces how difficult it is to stereotype.
• People have often said that I'm "direct" or "not afraid to offer an opinion," and I fully recognize that this is the lack of filter, or inability to catch certain social cues. It has certainly gotten me into trouble, but I'm OK with that.
• I have a lot of, uh, let's call them "quirks," when it comes to domestic habits. I'm lucky that Diana just kind of rolls with them, or perhaps contains rage over them.

There are a bunch of other things, but I'm not sure if I can attribute them to ASD or ADHD, or neither. My point is mostly that I'm reasonably self-aware, and that these are things that I'm sure some people, but not all, can relate to. It is materially who I am.

So when RFK says stupid shit like autism ruins families, and that autistic people will never pay taxes, have a job or go on a date, fuck RFK. Fuck him and his ignorant MAGA cult followers.

One of my college classmates unfriended me on Facebook, I imagine because they got tired of me calling out their dissemination of untrue things. It kind of bums me out, because this was a person that I respected in school. I tried to be respectful, though it's hard to reflect intent in text. I used to at least have spirited discussion with them, but I guess they had enough. Could be worse, I suppose. Some years ago one of my high school crushes I unfriended because she was super-crazy-racist. It shocks me to this day.

To be honest with myself, I wasn't going to change their mind on anything. They were already convinced that it was Ukraine's fault for being invaded. But the specific case involved a Fox talking head, talking about tariffs and how we were going to "win," despite nearly every reputable economist in the world explaining why this was bad. Just today, the Fed chair, arguably a top expert on macroeconomics, described the risk we're facing.

Truth is not that hard to find. Observable facts should be obvious enough. Evaluating the credibility of a source of information should also be straight forward. A nihilist with a podcast is not trustworthy the way a trained journalist is. More than anything though, expertise still matters. It's still a real thing. People say things like, "I did my research," but Googling results with your own confirmation bias is not research, it's parroting what you want to hear. Research for most people means gathering information from a number of sources, and leaning into the credibility and experience of experts. With kids dying of measles, in 2025, you can see that so-called "research" by some can have deadly consequences.

Mistrust of experts is bizarre. When I'm sick, I trust my doctor. If I need legal advice, I talk to a lawyer. If I need to fix my car, I take it in. As I've tried to learn new things, like lighting, I have leaned into people who have been doing it for years.

The source of the mistrust is hardly a mystery. The MAGA movement, which is undeniably fascist in nature, runs from the fascist playbook. Putting aside the victimhood and scapegoating for a moment, they do their best to sow mistrust in journalists and experts. If you don't believe them, then you have only the people attempting to consolidate power to trust. Convenient, right? I am amazed every single day that otherwise intelligent people buy into this. History is unambiguous about how that works.

It's possible that I am naive, but I can't imagine that this works out in the long run. Eventually, if you experience enough negative outcomes, how do you not lean back into expertise? Right now people are losing extraordinary amounts of wealth as the stock market craps out, and taxing liquor has never been well received either. Will inflation change minds? Given the volume of people who seem to think Ukraine is at fault for being invaded, I'm not sure. It's like some insane, political variant of Stockholm Syndrome.

If you're reading this and you are a person that rejects expertise, I encourage you to think that through.

I work in a place where our time off is "unlimited." Admittedly, it's kind of dodgy, because it feels good, but obviously there is some line to cross. With that said, I've made it a consistent habit over the last six years that I've had this available to make sure that I'm taking at least a week's worth every quarter. At least, I've tried to be consistent. With the holiday lull, it probably ends up getting closer to five weeks.

I finally got some long weekends on the books, which are not exactly full weeks, but even then I won't hit that two weeks in two quarters until the weekend of Independence Day. I guess that puts me slightly behind schedule. But I've resolved that I can't not make the time. I've been non-assertive about vacation time for the last nine months, and that's dumb. If you can take time off, you should take time off.

Granted, one of these weekends is a stay-cation, because the rat was offering rooms at our favorite Coronado Springs for $220 a night. That pool, plus Three Bridges... it's something for the whole family! The other is a cruise, and we are still trying to figure out a loop on the new Treasure. That's my brain-off vacation goals. Still, I'm starting to realize now that Europe was already more than a year and a half ago, and that sucks. We are going to look into being in Iceland for next year's eclipse, although it'll mean pulling Simon out of school for three days at the start. It could be seriously crowded in Reykjavik, but what a crazy thing to see in Iceland.

I want to get back to making more international plans like that, although Alaska and/or Hawaii would also be cool.

Make the vacation plans.

Youth has a lot of advantages, not the least of which is a naive sense of indestructibleness, probably ideal health and a sense that you have all of the time in the world. I remember feeling so grown-up at the time, but look back at it as having only a few years of adult experience. What a weird thing.

I don't think that I would take back even most of the dumb decisions I made back then. I absolutely struggled in certain ways, and hurtling toward divorce at 32 was definitely rough, but overall I think I did a lot of learning, as one does. But I can't shake the fact that I ignored the thing that older adults and employers insisted was important, and that was investing for retirement. I didn't. I opened a Roth IRA when I was 35, and barely put anything into it. That was stupid.

In my defense, I didn't expect that social security would be under threat, and I could not have predicted any of the moves in terms of career and family. Still, I'm in a place now where I'm consistently putting away 20% into various vehicles, which is the amount that financial advisors say is the right amount. Last year, it ended up being over 25%, and I was very proud of that. And up until Trump blew up everything, I was on a solid trajectory toward reaching my goals early.

The other advice I always heard was to buy not rent, in terms of housing. This I actually did, fortunately. Despite making nothing on my first house after 13 years, mostly because of the 2009 mortgage crisis, we didn't wait to buy when we moved to Florida. In that respect, I've just been lucky, because I'm up over 150% in a dozen years, to the extent that when it's time to downsize, we should be able to get away with not having a mortgage at all. That at least partially makes up for my lack of savings, but is still contingent on there not being another crash. Supply and demand still vastly favors sellers, for now, and it doesn't look like anyone is doing anything to genuinely move things the other way.

I'm mostly zen about my youthful financial inaction, but I definitely have a little regret. I think I could genuinely be fluid about work now had I paid attention.

The New York Times published a very excellent article about the way that ADHD is perceived and treated, and how it might not be right. It's a long but fascinating read, and the end comes to an interesting place. While the condition is often viewed as primarily biological, there's more evidence that environment plays a role not in causing it, but surfacing the symptoms. More to the point, it explores the idea that hyperfocus is not necessarily a symptom, but the context of the environment and task makes it easier for the brain to engage in the activity. Stuff that is intrinsically motivating is easier to do. Duh, right?

Maybe, but what I get out of it is that every brain is wired a little differently in terms of what it finds stimulating or interesting. Using my own college experience as an example, I went to intro to psych exactly four times, and got a D+ or C-, I think. On the other hand, I got an A in Broadcast Law, the most notoriously difficult class for radio/TV majors (I blew the curve, sorry, classmates). How do you account for this? I didn't know at the time that I had ADHD, but one class I resented having to take at all, the other was fascinating to me. And it wasn't necessarily that way for all of my major classes, because I didn't much care for doing the work in many of those either.

This explains why school in general can be a struggle for some people, but the right job can lead to great success. The reverse is also true. The problem is that school, and indeed the world, are made for certain standards for social interaction, work terms, etc. Neurodiverse people, including those with ADHD or autism, operate differently, which is not the same as "worse." In fact, it makes you start to wonder why these are referred to as "disorders" at all. I get it, at some point you can consider these conditions as impairments, that's one of the things that the article explores in terms of where the line is for diagnosis, but if intelligence is otherwise equivalent, is it really a disorder?

Getting my diagnosis in midlife was life-changing because it gave me the grace to realize that some of my self-labeled deficiencies are not in fact personality flaws. Struggling to do school work always made me feel like an asshole, but now I understand why it was difficult. School was not well structured to meet me where my brain goes, and I see that even more so with Simon. More and more, I am realizing that trying to conform my brain to act neurotypical is a pretty broken way to live.

More and more, I find myself including these conditions as a part of my identity. It's what makes me different, and I shouldn't have to apologize for being different. It's not an excuse for certain behaviors, but it is an explanation. Sure, I've developed a hundred different coping mechanisms to better fit in a world not entirely designed for me, but I'm just so tired of my default being labeled a disorder. It's my "normal."

If it sounds like there's an underlying tone of anger, you are correct. Being different somehow pushes you down below where assholes are. There are a great many people like me and Simon who contribute a great deal to the world, and we're good people. When you look around and see people rise to power, despite being cruel, hateful, and frankly stupid, it's not a great feeling.

I have autism and ADHD, and those things contribute to who I am. I am not a disorder.

In my talk to college students last weekend at Orlando Code Camp, it didn't take long for one of them to ask about the impact that AI would have on their careers. If you follow technology news, or really any news, the talk of artificial intelligence can be a little exhausting. I'm not an expert, but I do have some opinions based on my own anecdotes. I could be wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time.

First, my own experience with using AI in coding scenarios is somewhat limited. I don't write code in my day job, so the experience is limited to what I've done in my open source projects. The results are mixed. It has been really good at generating HTML and CSS, which I don't consider "coding" as much as it is fighting the quirks of syntax to make content look a certain way. Even after two decades, I rarely get it right the first time, but the generated stuff does if you're explicit. For example, I might tell it, "Create a layout with three rows, where the top one is 90 pixels high for a banner ad, the middle row can scroll, and the bottom row is fixed for buttons. Also, make it work in a reactive way for desktop and mobile."

It's pretty good, but not perfect, when it comes to writing code for unit tests. In fact, a lot of the time it will work by naming the test method to describe the test. Something like, "NullNameAndCountFiveOrHigherReturnsFalse," where I'm describing the input parameters and return value, works pretty well. Where you get into trouble is when you have really complex methods that you're trying to test, in part because it's hard to even mock out what you need. A lot of my older code is like this.

Writing the actual production code is more of a crap shoot. Especially in a smaller project, or one that lacks a lot of domain context, you have to prompt it and correct it a lot, and even then, you'll have to edit the results. As others have pointed out, the AI's tend to be resolved to give you something, even if it's wrong.

Getting back to the student question, what I told them was that the classic "GIGO" principle, garbage in, garbage out, still applies. These models are trained on a lot of public code bases in open source projects. That, or they're contextually looking at your code base written ten years ago by people who were not at a point in their career where they wrote "good" code. If the machines are learning based on crappy examples, it stands to reason that their output won't be better.

Therein lies the problem with AI overall... It has no concept of right and wrong. That's why people still manage to make it racist for funsies. Humans are sometimes not great at morality, so I don't know how you could synthesize it. "Correct" coding is a somewhat squishy idea too, as it depends on the language, frameworks, etc., and some are "better" than others.

Where I left it was, AI has potential to make you more productive, if you know how to prompt it. Most coding is already about composition, not algorithms, so if you can explain to the AI how you want to compose something, that's positive. I have not, however, seen any evidence that AI vendors know how to solve the quality/moral problem. Thousands of years of philosophy, and we haven't even figured it out among humans. I'm not saying it won't get there, but I don't believe, for now, that we're close.

The pandemic was a pretty isolating period of time. For whatever reason, maybe as a self-defense mechanism, it ended up being an amazing time for being creative and making stuff. I can't remember any other time in my adult life where I did more creative work. I wrote code every week of 2020, I did a radio show, I built MLocker, I watched Masterclass... so much making. It was deeply satisfying.

In the last year, I'm not making much of anything. I've generally given myself room to be OK with this, because you do have to "feel it" to do creative things. I'll never understand how writers that need to make a living can do it, because if they're not feeling it, they're not making a living. But for me, doing that stuff is deeply satisfying. I mean, to this day, I kind of get giddy to use MLocker, which I use quite literally every single day.

Why am I not feeling inspired or driven to be creative? I don't think that it's any one thing, but certainly the cognitive load of life in general likely has something to do with it. I do feel like I'm getting better with this, if for no other reason that I feel forced to roll with the volume of stuff more effectively. I wonder if something is changing in my brain to make the ADHD worse, too. I am extra aware of my thought spirals, and the never-ending noise in my head. There's an energy cost there. I also wondered if maybe the depression I was feeling three years ago was no longer being treated well by the bupropion, but if anything, feelings good and bad are far more intense, not dull. I'm sure not editing my short doc, and the feelings of regret there, don't help.

I do know that some of my concern is rooted in the fact that I put a lot of my identity in the fact that I can and do make stuff. For the last five years or so, I've been trying to figure out what my identity is, though fortunately this hasn't resulted in me joining any cults and worshiping an orange idol. This isn't performative, and I'm not interested in crafting a persona. This is for me.

My instinct is that the vibes will return, it just feels like a lot of time has passed without them.

I feel very fortunate that, within a few weeks of starting college, I was able to start doing radio as a DJ. I quickly took up the Saturday night shift, from 8 to 2, six glorious hours of playing tunes. No one else wanted it, because the school was unfortunately a suitcase college, which is to say that people often went home for the weekend. Losers. I can't at all relate to the people who wanted to go home, but then again, that's partly because there was nothing to do or look forward to at home.

So I made up this persona, Jeff Jones, and leaning into the Indiana Jones movie that came out just a few years earlier, called my show "Jeff Jones and the Saturday Night Music Crusade." Yes, it's kinda dumb, but 18-year-old me thought it was clever. By the second week, I had settled into a routine that included starting the shift with "Working For The Weekend" by Loverboy, and ending with, "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash. It was kind of a lonely thing, because it was hard to find people who would hang out. On occasion, I could get the local pizza place to send me free pizza by playing a few songs for them. What I know about myself now, with the autism and such, I get why this was an oddly euphoric experience that I continued through my junior year. My senior year, I was working for an actual commercial station on Saturday nights, for money ($4.50 per hour), so whatever I was doing on the college station was pretty limited.

Tonight we watched Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, presumably the last in the series. It starts out quite dark. Bridget's husband, Mark Darcy, apparently died in a terrorist attack while advocating for someone abroad. She's left with two kids, and the suss Daniel acts as a babysitter for her. She is decidedly middle age, with the extra burden of being a widow and single mother. She is not the young single person looking to looking to hookup that she was in the first movie. Everything about her life is vastly different, sometimes complicated, and not what any of us expects at that age. And she chaperones a bus trip with kids, belting out "Should I Stay or Should I Go."

It was kind of emotional to watch, not because of any specific situation that Bridget was enduring, but because everything about her life is so vastly different. My challenges are different, but I too am in a vastly different place relative to my 20's. The challenges of parenthood, career and generally transitioning through life, certainly did not become any easier. I think back to those radio shifts, and I was so optimistic and hopeful, despite being so alone for six hours on a Saturday night. Why was it easier to roll with life back then?

The stakes seem higher now, even though I can intellectually conclude that they're not. I have a stable relationship, but in terms of my role as a parent, there are limitations in terms of what I can do to affect another human being. Work is kind of similar, in that I can contribute in the best way that I know how, but I am ultimately working for other people (and having your own business is still working for other people, by the way, even if you are the "boss").

That song is about deciding whether or not to be with someone, I guess, but I suppose it could also be about figuring out whether or not you should be in a particular situation. But realistically, unless you're a hyperfocused Type-A freak obsessed with box-checking, few of us ever really end up in a place that we expect in life. I think that's totally OK, as long as we exercise the agency to change things when we believe that we should.

I've been speaking at Orlando Code Camp every year since 2014, minus the pandemic years. Put on every year by the Orlando .Net User Group (ONETUG), it is, without question, professionally my favorite weekend of the year. It has been a little less robust the last few years, because a good friend that I made moved out of state and doesn't get to participate. On the other hand, my first boss in Orlando, who to this day considers me a peer, is a professor at the college where we have the event.

I inevitably get caught up in conversations about how things go in our job, and that always leads to conversations about how things should really be based on our collective experiences. Then we wonder, "Wait, why are things not the way we think they should be?" Often the answer is that we're not proud enough to force the issue.

Mostly I just think about how to do this for another five or six years in a way that is satisfying without compromise or shitty feelings.

I've been a huge fan of Mark Rober's Crunch Labs kits from the time that they launched. Unfortunately, due in part to some shitty parenting, I also have like five of the kids kits not yet built. I have two more of the adult ones from the six-kit yearly Hack Pack subscription that I haven't built yet. The problem is that you build them, and they make what is essentially a toy or display piece in the case of the grown up version, but then what do you do with it?

The Hack Pack bits include Arduino computers and servos and sensors and stuff, so I can see how throwing away the parts around them is useful, even if I'm not sure how I might ever use them. The kids' Build Box stuff is not as obvious. They kind of just take up space. I'm sure that if I disappeared them that Simon wouldn't notice, but still.

Regardless, the science learning is pretty great. That's why I haven't just handed the Build Boxes to Simon. I want to sit with him and watch the accompanying video, and talk about the physics or engineering, and he tends to get it, because I ask him questions. The Hack Packs, I now have a better understanding of the intersection between code and physical parts, even if the electronics aren't entirely obvious. It's really great stuff.

I think that one of the most useful outcomes for me personally would be to get deep into 3D printing, because I can think of fun things to do with the electronics. I subscribed to Vectorworks, a CAD app that is in part used for lighting design, around Thanksgiving, but I haven't been able to commit to really learning it. It would be valuable because it would translate well into 3D printing. I could design anything in my head and make it a real object. That would be awesome.