Archive: February, 2025

There is a generalization that people with autism find it difficult to deal with change. Speaking for myself, this can be true for certain things, and I see that in Simon as well. I feel like I've learned to adapt when it comes to professional change, and even where I live, though I'm happy to have that stable because moving is exhausting (we did it six times between 2009 and 2017). But change is one thing... chaos is another.

The universe is pretty chaotic, and small random things can in fact change big things. Everyone who has watched Jurassic Park knows this. Chaos is a lot harder to deal with, for me at least, because of the randomness of it. You can only predict and account for it so much. A little chaos is fine, because it challenges you and keeps your brain active. A lot of chaos is exhausting.

I feel like I'm enduring a lot of chaos lately. The cognitive cost is rough. I'm "brain tired" all of the time. I'm thinking about this right now, on a Friday, after having "a day," but being able to come up for air for a day or so. It's hard, because some chaos you can influence and reduce, some you can't. The parts that you can't seem to be the things that play an outsized role in your priorities.

Not looking for solutions or conclusions, just ranting.

A retired executive that I follow often talks about the great talent that surrounded him in various stages of his career. He also has a great story about listening to the people that you lead. I think about that a ton. None of the managers that I've ever known or worked for were effective without listening. Yes, leaders are ultimately accountable for making decisions, but they can't do this arbitrarily. There is always nuance and context to consider, and you don't gain that if you don't listen.

In technology, especially when it comes to software engineering, many leaders are former developers, myself included. We start our careers by solving problems. It's our instinct to want to fix things and make decisions. The problem is that this does not scale well. I bet most engineers have stories of leaders who became VP's or CTO's relatively quickly, or maybe not having many jobs prior, that stay in this instinctive problem solving mode. The thing is, they tend to lack the experience or wisdom to have most of the answers, and even if they had that, they're not close enough to the makers to truly understand what's going on. So they hand down decisions because, well, they're the boss. Maybe this is true in most professions or industries.

What I've learned though is that, as a leader, you should always be driving toward outcomes. Whether those outcomes are defined by you and your peers, or a larger strategy given to you, your goal is not to make decisions, it's to move closer to the outcomes. I'm not saying that you won't make decisions, but making them requires taking all of the input from those in your charge, even if you don't like what you're hearing. That's where the real value and power of leaders comes from, in the ability to listen.

To be clear, this is not a sign of weakness. I had a (shitty) manager once tell me that I had to "be assertive" and "show them who is in charge" to be effective. But modeling my behavior after managers that I admired, I knew that this advice would only cause my people to lose respect for me, and not get me closer to the desired outcomes. I left that job a few months later, but sometimes the anti-pattern sticks with you.

It's important that we, as leaders, set the tone for listening. It doesn't matter if you're a line manager or leading a nation. We can't have all of the answers, but we can help steer toward the right outcomes when we listen.

I started my professional life working in city government, before I even graduated from high school, actually. Brunswick, Ohio had a "cable TV" office, which televised city council meetings and produced public affairs programming. It only had one full-time guy at the time, but I worked for him for years on a part-time basis. Eventually, I became his peer working the same job in the next town over (for a lot less money, I should add). That experience, which included working with the local school districts and county, really helped me appreciate what local government could do, how those local tax dollars were used. It always bothered me that people were so hostile toward the local government units when they asked for money to fund necessary things, which was always followed by complaints about not having the things (roads, schools, etc.), as if they did not understand the cause and effect.

While government scrutiny is an absolutely necessary part of the system, mistrust of it is not. Unfortunately, former President Ronald Reagan planted the seeds for mistrust that have had effects that he probably did not intend. He famously said that he was weary of anyone who said, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." Putting aside for a moment the fact that he was the government, the implication that he was making is that government is somehow the bad guy that will take your money and get in your way. That sentiment has persisted to the point where now a bunch of corrupt and morally bankrupt people are trying to gut the government and claiming that it's wasteful, without evidence, and even firing the people who were there to call out the waste.

I'll be the first to tell you that government is not without waste. I generally don't even agree with its priorities. But regardless of tax or debt implications, I understand that it is necessary, and it does deliver value. The amount spent on defense is absurd, relative to the rest of the budget, but we can't not have it. There are a ton of different things that may not deliver obvious value, but if you ask experts about those, you'll learn why they're necessary.

For example, foreign aid, which seems to be a hot topic now, brings stability to other parts of the world. How does that benefit the US? Well, stability means less illegal drug production, less migration forced by famine and climate change, better health outcomes and less disease certainly keep pathogens away, etc. We don't have a great track record on fostering democracy, but stable nations also don't attack allies.

And of course, it should be well understood that investing in ourselves, in education and science, yields a ton of benefit relative to the cost. The Covid pandemic could have been even worse were it not for those government investments. Raising smarter kids and funding research puts us at an advantage relative to nations who are not our allies.

We need to stop pretending that government is the bad guy. That, and if we're going to be skeptical of anything, it should be people who believe that their leadership in government is the answer. It can't be the bad guy and the good guy.

College has seeped into my brain a lot lately, and not really in a way that's connected to my own experience with it. For example, I had a dream the other night that I was dating violinist Lindsey Stirling, and doing her lighting design while in college. We just finished up watching all three seasons thus far of The Sex Lives Of College Girls on Max, and every B-roll shot of the campus, they apparently used Vassar, had me thinking about campus life.

I've written more than once about the dreams, and it's worth noting that they don't involve actual Ashland University, the school I graduated from. My actual college experience was kind of a mixed bag. It was often a lonely experience, and I spent most of my sophomore year being depressed. I had an emotionally abusive instructor, which is weird to say in retrospect, but he was some of the reason that I disengaged a lot from my major activities. A close friend turned out to be a total sociopath, which wasn't great for my already tenuous social life. My senior year, I lived off-campus, totally over working in residence life as an RA, ready to just be graduated to start my career, and dating Stephanie, who would become my first wife. I wouldn't say that college was a bad experience, it just isn't what I would have liked it to be.

But what stands out is the feeling of starting a new year. For a little while, at least, every year I felt confident and hopeful, and I was kind of a super version of myself. I even talked to girls, though these encounters always went poorly, for reasons I better understand now (ASD, among other things). I don't recall rain at all in the fall, just the sun and leaves changing colors. I mean, it had to of rained, but that's not the memory. I even looked forward to those first weeks of classes. Then stopping by the mail box to see what might be there, like Columbia House CD's. Maybe more importantly though, is the things that I don't remember because they weren't things. There was no full-time job, no parenting, no real obligations beyond graduating. It's a weird time, because you are technically an adult, but you are in many ways protected from the world. Making mistakes carries far less risk.

I'm pretty sure that it's some combination of those feelings that cause this obsession. I've had similar feelings since. When I would visit John Carroll University when Stephanie was doing a masters there, I was content to sit and read or something else while she was doing science. There was no wifi, let alone smartphones then. Working at Microsoft in Redmond was very strangely college-like, only instead of forking over six figures over four years, they paid you six figures. (Fact check: Room and board I think peaked at $17k per year at Ashland, though with grants and stuff, only the rich actually paid that much.)

I don't have a graduate degree, so I couldn't even coach at a college if I wanted to. There's nothing really that I could do professionally in an academic setting. And really, talking to friends who do work in academia, it's not a great spot to be in these days, what with the cost of school and the dumbing down of America. If I really distill down the feels that I am nostalgic for, it's what I call the "summer camp" experience, where people come together to do stuff for some limited time. I imagine that making a movie or a play is like this, too.

Maybe what I really long for is the simplicity of that stage of life. I'm trying to figure out how to get back to that simplicity, while enjoying all of the things that the complexity of life has allowed me to do. Weird obsession, indeed.

If you were a reader of this blog eight years ago, you may recall that I wrote a lot about the fucked up US politics, especially as they related to Trump. You may have noticed that I haven't been doing it this time around, even though frankly it's much worse. The racism and attack on democracy isn't even veiled anymore. It doesn't mean that I don't get involved, especially when it comes to donating to advocacy organizations, but I've largely reframed it all.

To start with, Trump be Trump, and he's an exhausting moron. My concern has largely shifted to the voters who put him there, or worse, didn't vote at all. This nonsense is on them. And confronting them generally goes the same way every time. If you ask them how they could vote for a [insert offense type here], they will either disengage completely, or cite some made up thing that they believe without evidence. You can't really argue with willful stupidity any other way than, "Show me the evidence."

But even then, there are layers to the lunacy. The performative stupidity you just have to ignore. I'm talking about things that aren't real, like "renaming" the gulf or ordering a ban on paper straws. I'm not saying those things don't matter, but that category of things is designed to please the dummies who believe anything they hear. I don't have time in my own life to concern myself with small things, let alone that kind of nonsense.

The next layer is the performative actions that will, without question, be overturned by courts. We've already seen a ton of that. One organization claims he lost 92% of these cases last time around, and the New York Times counts 29 orders blocked already, in just one month, with a ton pending. It's a colossal waste of money and court time for this stuff, but that's what it's there for.

After that, there is the concern of whether or not the clown cabinet follows the courts' orders. Trying to discredit the judiciary is a classic fascist move. That part is admittedly a little scarier. In the event that he were to start blowing off the courts, two things happen. The first is that we see if Congress is willing to act. The Republican majority is thin, and according to some pollsters, only a third of them are known "loyalists," which is to say they used him as a point of reference in campaigning. More than half haven't, and don't talk about him at all. It could go either way, but their constituencies, in most states at least, also did not enjoy large majority wins. Anecdotally, I'm surprised by the number of lifelong Republicans that I know personally who were already done with him in 2020, and now they're outright pissed. Naively then, I think there would be consequences to those working at the Capitol. Ignoring the courts is a "high crime," and if you don't impeach on that, you're complicit.

The second thing that happens is that the protesting gets more intense, and the potential for violence increases. I hope it doesn't come to that, but when you keep backing large groups of people into a corner, they eventually push back.

So at the moment, we're in kind of a wait-and-see season. A lot of people are going to be and already have been hurt by this season, and it's going to get worse. The economy is already showing some signs of weakness, which is crazy that it could happen that fast. There's a domino effect already in play. They fired all of the people trying to contain and trace bird flu, which is going to harm chicken and egg prices, and potentially beef. When you withhold funds already appropriated from projects in process, more people lose their jobs. When you put tariffs on stuff, the price of everything goes up. And why, to satisfy an ego instead of an actual policy goal? These fuckwits are suggesting that programs intended to feed people are instead trying to encourage kids to get transgender reassignment surgery. This obsession against trans people is the worst of humanity, and it's being institutionalized.

That's where I'm at. I'm giving a lot to advocacy orgs right now because my employer matches them all, but only for the next month. I'm monitoring, but redirecting outrage to more useful actions and looking for organization and deliberate positive intent. There are a lot of things to track, and I'm confident that the negative impact will be widespread. Will people still believe that scapegoats are to blame, or the idiot they elected? I guess we'll find out what the durability of the system is that the founding fathers built.

The value of my therapist is pretty extraordinary. She helps lead me to interesting things that are thought provoking and useful for the purpose of better mental health. Today we were talking about the malaise I feel following external validation. Let me see if I can codify what we discussed. It makes sense in my head at least.

For better or worse, people find purpose in work. My earliest career ambition was to work in radio, and when I got there after college, it wasn't what I hoped. It kinda sucked. I did local government TV stuff for three years after that, then left it all for software. I've been doing that ever since. For much of the first half of that career, I kinda let it just happen to me. Then I started to actively manage it. Going to Microsoft was a big deal, and frankly the only time I've really felt any sense of career achievement. I felt this just slightly when I started contracting for SeaWorld, but I think much of that joy was just landing something in Orlando. But as it stands today, I don't know that I'm really reaching for any specific milestones in my career. I like my job and what I get to do, reaching challenging outcomes, but as much of it appeals to my strengths, but I'm not thinking about promotions or salary targets (though I welcome the latter).

Humans seem to struggle, a lot. For many people, especially in poorer nations, a significant portion of their lives are committed to survival. They don't have the luxury of even basic career management. The weird thing is that, even if we are wealthy by comparison, wealth doesn't mean that you're without struggle. I'm not trying to compare looking for food to the kinds of things that I struggle with, because that would be absurd, but it feels like there's always something. Parenting is really, really hard, and I don't feel like I'm doing it right. That's one of my struggles, and there are others I don't really write about.

Still, my struggles do not preclude me from maintaining a sense of curiosity about the world. I'm wondering if that realization explains the overwhelming feeling that I don't feel like I'm moving toward... something (other than the obvious). I know, midlife or whatever. But I keep coming back to the fact that I've hit certain milestones already. I mean that in good and bad ways, in terms of life experience, like I've seen some shit, and experienced a lot of joy. When my therapist asked me, if I could make something happen tomorrow to bring me great joy, what would it be? I didn't have an answer at first. What I did discover is that there are a great many situations that bring joy in the moment, and they are not destinations or milestones.

OK, sometimes they're literal destinations, but not milestones, because I like to travel. Wandering down a random street in London or seeing steam vents in Iceland certainly brought a lot of joy. Meeting people in that context, and even making new friends for life, is also joyful. Making stuff, virtual or otherwise, is great. I really love to see someone succeed in some small part because I enabled them. The thing is, I'm not a box checker, but my cultural indoctrination suggests that I should be, as if that's your purpose.

So the indifference that I regretfully feel toward receiving deserved validation is mostly a function of me not being intrinsically motivated by milestones. They're nice, and I want to be recognized for what I do, but I don't really place the weight on it that I thought I did. In some ways, maybe this is good, because to seek joy means to seek smaller, present situations. It's not that I've achieved all of the things, it's that the achievement isn't what's important to me. Deep down, I knew this, but I couldn't sort it out.

I've stated that I begrudgingly would like to feel some validation now and then. I used to crave it in certain ways, but in adulthood I mostly just expect to never get it. I've had a lot of therapy to understand where validation should fit in my life, where it should reasonably come from, and how to move on when I haven't had it. I weirdly believe that I don't need it, but I kind of deserve it. A well-adjusted adult who is not a sociopath, and exercises humility, does not generally seek or feel entitled to validation, but maybe my damage is that I need it anyway.

Today I got it, and I don't know what to do with it. In leadership roles, I'm quick to defer recognition to others, because I know that's what the best leaders that I've known do. But doing that, it seems like it should be a cascading thing, and I'm in the middle. I'm just so used to shitty situations where I wonder if it's my personality or something else that keeps me from that loop.

Like a lot of things, I'm overthinking it. Still, it's a little upsetting that I'm so not used to it that my natural reaction is to wonder why I don't hear it more.

Last year I discovered that there were some gems to revisit on GOG, or Good Old Games, starting with Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2. It turns out that an Amazon Prime perk is a bunch of free games via their own gaming thing, though many of the titles they have are actually acquired via GOG or one of the other services. One of those recently was Tomb Raider: Anniversary, the cleaned up and remastered original game. She still has the absurd proportions.

Video games were exciting when that game came out, in 1996, on Playstation, Sega Saturn and the PC. I think it was the game that I bought with the Playstation, which for its time was a really big deal. Nintendo had the 64, and Sega had the Dreamcast a year or two later. PC's were for the first time coming out with dedicated 3D GPU's. They were expensive, though there were some reasonable models out in the coming years. At some point, I did have a PC remake of the original Tomb Raider that was made to run on my Rendition card, I think, though I think I had an S3 and ATi at some point. I couldn't afford a 3Dfx card, the state of the art at the time. Rendition had a compelling price-performance ratio, and they were relentless at improving drivers. They didn't make it, financially.

It is wholly absurd playing even an enhanced version of a game like Tomb Raider, which is closing in on 30 years, on a modern computer. I'm playing with a wireless controller (they weren't a thing back then) at 4K resolution and 60 fps locked in. The fans don't even get loud. But it's surprising that it still looks pretty good with the improved textures and such. It was made to run without 3D hardware, so that original version was not pretty, with blocky and pixelated everything. I do think it's fair to say that this game invented the third-person adventure game.

This one hasn't completely aged well though. The controls are kind of janky compared to newer games, and the game is littered with what I call dumb physical challenges that you may have to repeat over and over until you get it right. It's annoying, but not intolerable on a modern computer that reloads the scene almost instantly, but it was just brutal on Playstation. Remember, they had very little memory and had to load stuff off of CD-ROM's. You lost so much of your life to loading. I'm not sure if I actually finished any of the original versions, but I did this time. The game says it took me 14 hours, and yes, I had to look up some walkthrough videos because some of it was absurdly hard to find anything to do.

I really like the reboot trilogy that was released in the last decade. They all look great, and are playable on all kinds of hardware. They're cheap now, too. The control is excellent and you're not likely to get stuck. There's more stealth than combat, but all of the puzzles. Lara is even appropriately modeled as an athlete, which makes more sense with all of the climbing and running. The 2018 movie covers some of the ground in the reboot games, and you'd think that Alicia Vikander as Lara inspired the game, but the movie came years later.

This has been a fun diversion, and I hope that I'll find more. With Xbox Game Pass, it's pretty low risk to try new-to-me games, but I feel like it's such an investment to even get through tutorials. I'm lazy doing lazy things.

I was reading an opinion piece about evolving attitudes toward sexuality among women, especially Gen-X women, and then an accounting of the many recent movies where the bad guy is literally a bad guy who is controlling or violent toward women. And of course there's a bit of a, let's call it a wave, of thinly veiled racism posing as a combination of grievance and victimhood. One of the underlying themes of all this is a shared sense of white, straight American males who feel like they're not heard, displaced or otherwise threatened by cultural and societal changes. That's a useful thing to think about, if only to better understand where the sentiment comes from.

To be clear, white hetero males are not actually disadvantaged in any way in American society. Even if they were suddenly, it seems to me like that would be a valid course correction. Objectively, meaning it's measurable in data, white hetero males make more money and have outsized influence on the world compared to other cohorts of races, genders and sexuality. I'm not going to debate that with anyone, because any other view is just a an uninformed opinion. Math is not a belief system.

I was reading an account by an actor and writer who traced his lineage not only to slaves in Virginia, but was also able to identity the names of the slave owners. That got me to thinking, that significant parts of the population are born with a certain identity. The identities are rooted in being different, being oppressed, being treated not as equals. This does include some white Americans, certainly, if they are born within a generation or two of immigrants. That identity also comes to those who are any flavor of queer, even if they don't really know of that identity until later in life. Many variations on those groups don't necessarily choose the identity, or want to be defined by it, but even if they don't embrace it, it may be forced on them.

Which brings me back to the straight white guy. I'm one of those. I've honestly never had any specific identity that I, uh, identify with. There was a very brief moment where I identified as a college graduate, until I realized that nothing was special about it. I placed some identity in my work in the earlier parts of my careers, too. But I had no default identity, born with or chosen, that I can really think of. I only know that I'm about a quarter of Polish descent, but I've never leaned into it. For most of my life, I haven't been able to tell you who I am, only things that I've done.

Men through most of history have held a certain societal advantage, and their position was not based on merit at all. White hetero males were on top of the food chain without really earning it. As civil rights have evolved over the last century, this default position has left a lot of these guys wondering where that leaves them. I speculate (I leave it to the anthropologists to explain it) that this is part of the root of the whole MAGA nonsense, because they're lead by an unapologetic misogynist and racist. If a powerful person can be hostile toward women, and be racist, and embrace a silly stereotype of "masculinity," it makes it OK to be the same way, like the old days.

I can't pretend to explain why you would wrap up your identity in a "masculine" definition that's so terrible toward others. But again, if you don't have another identity to lean into, maybe this is all that makes sense to you. Losing it causes fear. That's a choice, and I don't think that it's a good one. A non-trivial portion of American has subscribed to this idea that being "manly" means ignoring consequences, controlling women, rejecting people who look different from you, and having a rigid definition of love that must be declared as the only way. Those are not admirable things to wrap up your identity in.

For me, being a dude hasn't really figured into things. In fact, my journey has been more about rejecting any expectations about who I'm supposed to be, and gender is just the tip of that. But there's no question that I'm freer to enjoy that lack of expectations because I'm a white hetero male. In just the last few years, and in watching my son grow up, I've come to understand what it means to be neurodiverse (read: have ASD), and that has further changed my outlook. I'm not sure that I make it about my identity, even though I'm open, maybe even anxious, to talk about it. The psychologist who diagnosed me suggested that much of my empathy for marginalized people may be connected to a lifetime of being different and not fitting in. I think that's probably true. But even with that being understood, I have never had to worry about driving while black or whether or not I could get certain healthcare.

The bottom line is that I'm oddly free to choose my identity, and connect to it in any way that I see fit. Any random person who meets me does not start with any biases. If I were a woman, or a person of color, or not shy about queerness, the same random people would already have connected me to an identity. That's the tricky thing, because being born any particular way need not dictate your identity unless you want it too, or find value in it. But this also includes being born a white hetero male. In fact, if you have that latitude and freedom, maybe don't pick the identity that's wrapped in hate and fear. It's not a good look.

I used to marvel at the fact that my eyesight was so good, because my mom wore glasses since she was young, and as my dad put it, he's "legally blind" without glasses. Then my child started on glasses pretty early. Genetically, I'm predisposed for shitty sight, I would think. But I've never required glasses.

I still don't, technically, but my eyes are not where they were even a year or two ago. My near-sight is not as good as it used to be, to the extent that I'm holding my phone further away just to see it, and tiny text is now unreadable... but not always. I'm not an eye doctor, but it seems like this is more of a function of fatigue than it is some kind of change in my eye. Maybe it's both, I don't know. But especially after being sick last week and backing away from near things (including my phone) more often than not, my phone is sharper than ever. Well, unless it's late at night. During the daylight hours, I've literally been surprised at the sharpness of text on the little screen.

I'm not naive enough to think that it isn't going to get worse over time. I'm spending less time looking at my phone though, so that's a positive. I'm also glad that it's the near stuff that I'm having an issue with, and not things beyond 18 inches. There's no issue driving, or even looking at computer monitors. The robust detail and texture of things outside of that near range is as good as it has ever been. I really hope I'm able to retain that as long as possible.

Meh, this is what aging is. Seeing a bit of vulnerability in my wellness in this sense may be good for me. I need motivation to be more active to fend off other physical issues. Addressing that is so difficult for me, I guess because it's accepting a reality I'm not ready for, and admitting that I'm "wrong" about my activity choices otherwise. I think it would be neat to live to 100, which feels like an eternity, because, relatively speaking, it is. The odds of that increase with physical activity.

Meanwhile, I'm writing this at 6:30 at night on my laptop, which is right around that 18" range, and the screen is lovely (though not as lovely it would be if it were OLED, Apple).

There's a lot of backlash, doubt, frustration and anger over what social media is today. Well, unless it's your source of self-validation for things you believe that are morally questionable. In that case, the socials are awesome for you. For years there were a lot of algorithmic tactics intended to keep you engaged longer, but the intent is simpler than that. The intent is to get as many ads in front of you as possible. What it doesn't do is anything even remotely social, or at least, not in a way that is analogous to any real-life behavior.

If we go back far enough on the Internets, message boards, or even the ancient Usenet stuff, are in many ways one of the earliest forms of what we might call social media. The intent here was to gather people who care about some niche thing a place to talk about it. It was shocking at the time how terrible some people would act in these communities, especially where they weren't moderated, but the upside far outweighed the noise. Much of my social foundation exists because of these boards, and it's part of the reason I maintain them today. I think that value potential still exists.

Also around the turn of the century, blogs started to become a thing. I still love that format (seeing as how you're reading one), because it's more than drive-by food porn or photos of your cat. There's room for nuance and more complex thoughts. There was also a ping-back mechanism that most of the major blogs implemented back in those days, where if you linked to another blog, there was a link back to yours. It facilitated some interesting conversations, and while spam was a problem, it was an amazing, decentralized thing that did not involve a single platform.

Then MySpace came around, and while it had a concept of "friends," it mostly was for self-promotion, especially in music circles. I went to a party once at a conference thrown by MySpace, where they were recruiting, and heavily convinced they were gonna take over the world. Hilarious. Friendster was a thing too, which is apparently being resurrected. This was before mobile was really a thing, so keep in mind that this was all desktop computer activity, with photos uploaded from dedicated digital cameras.

When Facebook started to get some traction, it was college-only, but the intent of it was mostly to find out who was single, and who was having an awesome time at a party doing awesome shooters. When it went to general release, it was still that, but for a good decade thereafter, I think it did a good job connecting people, or keeping them connected. From there on, it became about the algorithms, engagement and ads. Instagram seems to be headed that way now too.

So when you look back at that history, I'm not sure that we ever reached an ideal of what social networks could or should be. I tend to project my own ideals as those that everyone wants, but they probably don't. Still, what I think is the right intent includes:

• Keeping in touch with friends and what they're doing. This means they announce that they've changed jobs, or taking a vacation, and yes, sharing food porn and cats.
• Not seeing ads. That's a negative intent, but an important one. I understand that this means something that isn't free, but I don't see how else you get away from the ads.
• Chronological posts. I don't see any reason why you'd want to know more about things that happened days ago. And if you miss things, you miss things.
• Get in and out, no doomscrolling. If I have even a hundred "friends," I don't imagine that they're all posting a million things a day. If I need a time waster, I can do crosswords or Two Dots or literally anything that doesn't involve ads.
• No behavioral tracking, taxonomies or algorithms. The network doesn't need "insight" into me, it just needs to show me stuff from my friends.
• Privacy. Nothing is public, nor is it possible to make public. Either you're an accepted friend and can see what I post, or you're not.

That's a pretty short, straight forward list. Nothing has ever existed that I think purely can do all of this. I'd be willing to pay for something that did, even if it's of limited utility because not a lot of people I know are on it. I don't know what the appetite for people paying is, but it's probably not high.

For better or worse, my life tends to revolve around food. That's tricky though, given how picky I am and texture averse, not to mention I only eat chicken (and turkey), as far as protein goes. I would say that makes me high maintenance if it weren't for the fact that what I tend to like is pretty simple. Sure, I'm a chicken and potato guy, but I do like a lot of Asian fusion faire, and moving west and south from there, I do enjoy a number of Indian dishes (the hotter the better). And it's worth noting that going out for lunch is one of the few things that I consistently do to balance out my day as a work-from-home person. It doesn't have to be fantastic, but it helps if I can eat outside.

What I don't enjoy, also atypical given my taste and desire for familiarity, is chain restaurants. Back when I was a beef-eating burger addict, and it wasn't all microwaved crap, I would find myself at a Friday's frequently. But when I think back to first meeting Diana, we may have gone there a few times, and some Cheesecake Factory stops, but mostly we went to local joints. In fact, when we moved to Seattle, honestly we didn't have a lot of choice, because chains were surprisingly hard to come by there.

Just before we moved back east, we did a road trip across Washington and into Idaho, staying overnight in Spokane. There we had few choices, and ended up at an Applebees as a last resort. It was bad in epic ways, and my trashing of the place is to this day my most popular blog post. In the years since, we have leaned into a few chains on an infrequent basis, like Red Robin because it was Simon-compatible. They've since gone out of business just about everywhere.

Fortunately, the food scene is pretty robust here in Orange County. Obviously there are the theme park places that are unique and interesting, especially on the Disney property, but there are so many local places. We even have a few local chains, like 4 Rivers BBQ and Tijuana Flats. The latter varies in quality, but it'll do in a pinch. Our new favorite is a place called The Hangry Bison. Not only is the food fantastic, but their bar service is great, the atmosphere is great, and the hospitality in general has been great. It happens to sit on a street with a number of places that we've visited over the years, including a Thai restaurant that makes a solid red curry.

I bring this up because, recently on PointBuzz, there was a thread about restaurants, and people go on and on about the chains. I don't get it. Even Sandusky, Ohio, has to have some local places that are better. I've been to a few over the years. In general, I'd rather give money to a local business owner than some corporation owned elsewhere. The world is Walmarted enough, I think it's justifiable to spend a little more to keep it local.

This has been one of the hardest parenting weeks we've had in awhile. Actually, several weeks. Simon ended up failing a class last quarter. Then we recently got the warning that he was failing several classes. While certainly there are challenges to the way that he learns, this came about because he simply wasn't doing the work. When we had been asking about it the last few weeks, he would always insist that he was caught up. Well, now we know he wasn't.

The hardest thing is that there is a confluence of issues, and we're trying to solve or address them all at once. It's still not clear what the path forward is, but I think I can catalog it all like this:

• Processing speed. Last fall he went through a diagnostic to qualify various functions. For processing speed, he was in the lowest percentile. That particular block of tests tells a weird story, because his visual-spatial intelligence is in the highest bracket, while working memory and fluid reasoning were high average. What I've read about processing speed deficiencies is that it's like a hydraulic lift. The lift doesn't move fast, but it can lift many tons. What this means in the classroom is that he doesn't roll well at a fast pace.
• Panic. Emotional regulation is, in general, difficult for neurodiverse kids (and frankly, adults at times). So when he gets behind, his instinct is to freak out and get overwhelmed.
• Social stigma. Various school folk have suggested all kinds of mitigation and adaptation strategies, but the problem with all of them is that it makes him different. So for example, if he were to use speech to text technology, that's ripe for shitty kids making fun of him or calling him stupid.
• Discomfort. All of the above create uncomfortable situations. I can't blame him for wanting to avoid that, but I also want him to try to adapt and challenge himself when faced with discomfort. My expectation is probably not reasonable.

That's all difficult, but the getting behind and saying he was caught up was a poor choice, and so there are consequences. We literally took the computer off of his desk. I hate it. He really enjoys working with theme park simulations and games, and it's also his social outlet. Taking that away is taking away his happiness, and I know it. (I also have the damage that wanting to use computers as a child, I was treated like that was a burden or a bad thing.) The volume of tears and generally terrible feelings around here is high.

It doesn't help that his psychiatrist basically said that public schools suck at accommodating neurodiverse kids. While I'm definitely seeing that now, in high school, I think it's a bit of an overgeneralization. They did OK in elementary, and even middle. I didn't worry that he would fall between the cracks in the lower levels. But now, does a school with 3,000 kids really have the ability to be effective? And sure, I know that the law requires certain things, but that doesn't make it so. And with the dipshits in Washington trying to make us even dumber, who even knows what to expect.

I don't know how to teach him to be more self-reliant. We're in a time when you have the world's knowledge (and misinformation) at your finger tips. But he always has a reason that he can't learn on his own. Tonight it's that he was worried about the district looking at his browser history, which I don't even have words for.

As I said, I don't think that general intelligence is the problem, but rather how he is wired to learn. Last weekend, Diana was helping him with evolution, and he understands it in a non-trivial way. But he can't have someone holding his hand at every step, and that's what he seems to want. I'm not convinced that it's what he needs.

Let me just put this out here... I'm not soliciting solutions. I'm ranting to get it out, and the only thing I really need is empathy. More neurotypical adults suggesting things without context is not helpful.

Some years ago I worked for someone who approached parenting like running a business. I always found this laughable, because despite supervising people for half of my professional life, kids are just not the same. Not even a little.

For one thing, when you start the process, the stakes are very different. If you don't feed them, they die. If you don't change their diapers, they wallow in their own shit. The relationship is totally different. Employees are there to feed your company and clean up your shit, while parenting is the other way around.

But the biggest, fundamental difference is that you can't fire your kid. If they don't do their laundry or clean their room, they're still on the "payroll," so to speak. This is what's so hard about parenting, at least for me. At work, you define outcomes, and try to build people around the execution of reaching those outcomes. At home, the only outcomes that ultimately matter is that they get an education and end up self-sufficient enough that they can exist in the world without you. I can't think of any endeavors more different from each other.

I happen to be in overlapping "seasons" of stress in parenting and at work. The stuff at work will settle down, as it does, and even if it didn't, the company could disappear tomorrow and I'd just have to move on to another job. Parenting, especially for a teenager, involves a relatively short window to help build all the life skills that make independent survival possible. For real, think about that. I've never been more scared of failure at anything in my life. You can't just exact consequences, because the human can be indifferent about consequences, and you can't fire them. And that doesn't even get to the love and feelings that (should) come with being a parent. It's daunting.

I've often wondered why some people turn out one way, and other another way. I attribute a lot of that to environment, but I don't know what percentage could be assigned to that. Brain function, teachers, social interaction, intrinsic motivation, etc., all play a part. I can't accept that parenting isn't the most important part. That's a lot of pressure.

The Smartless podcast recently had Luis Elizondo as a guest. He's known for being a former intelligence guy and has repeatedly said there are things the government is hiding that we are likely ready to hear. Whether that means aliens or something else, it serves to show that humanity needs to understand its relative place in the universe, which may cause it to realign its priorities. The interview is excellent, in that he gives a lot of analogies that help you understand how much humanity doesn't know. Whether or not what he's talking about is real, or if he's legitimate, doesn't matter. The point is that our cultural departure from reason, science and expertise is hubris at best, willful stupidity at worst.

If we found out today that aliens were real, how would we respond? And I mean "aliens" more in the metaphorical sense, as something so profound and surprising that it causes us to reframe our understanding of our place in the universe. It's hard to believe that people are trying to scapegoat diversity as something preventing hiring on merit, when in fact diversity efforts are intended to guarantee that people are hired on merit. It's hard to believe that basic economic principles are being ignored in order to placate people who feel like they're victims of... something. It's hard to believe that government thinks that art is dangerous. But here we are.

My understanding of humanity is that we are little more than a rounding error in the grand scope of the universe. What makes us human, and different from the other animals, is our ability to be empathetic and help each other. A subset of the population leans into rejecting that humanity, largely to exercise power over others, and that's a function of survival that "lower" animals exhibit. If we're to really embrace our superiority, it seems to me that we need to embrace that humanity.

The weirdest thing about this is that I think a majority portion of the humanity rejection committee is older, which is to say they have fewer years ahead of them than behind them. I'm in that cohort now, probably only by a few years (if we're to forecast a continual improvement in life expectancy), and my motivation has shifted from a youthful sense of morality to an appreciation for the relative brevity of our lives. But in both cases, my m.o. is to want the best for all humans, regardless of where they landed in the birth lottery. Trying to put me and people who look or think like me at the top feels pretty stupid, and anti-humanity, considering we'll all be dust before too long anyway.

So maybe we need the aliens to shock us into that reality. Trying to appeal to a sense of humanity isn't working, maybe because they don't have that sense. Maybe they need something to fear that isn't other humans. I don't understand why we need to fear anything, other than to satisfy our animal instincts, but clearly we've not evolved enough.

Right now would normally be the time that I'm posting a Playbill selfie of me and Diana at a show. Unfortunately, I've been sick for three days, so she went with a coworker. It started out Sunday night with a sore throat, then turned into what I imagine is a sinus infection. Yesterday, my head felt like a brick. Not a lot of sleeping going on, so by today, I was just fried. I slept four hours during the day.

In the last two days I optimistically thought I could work, but didn't last long. Today I just gave up and slept, which is probably what I needed. This has been a thing with me for most of my adulthood. I don't allow myself to just be sick. I don't know why. Part of it is that I have some important work to do this week, sure, but I'm sure it's related to my sentiment that I should be creating things all of the time.

Time is awfully important.