Over the years, I've talked a little bit here and there about getting divorced. Most people didn't know what was going on, almost until it was over. But it was about 20 years ago that we initially split. That started off a chain reaction of events that eventually led me to remarry, have a child, and move across the country to work for a company that I never thought I'd work for. Stephanie and I are still friends, and I'm grateful for that. The reasons it didn't work out aren't that important to anyone other than us. I will tell you my story, the short version at least, of how things went after that.
I was a total mess for awhile, though I didn't really let on about it. There's just one blog post that implies something bad happened. I was very immature for my age, and I also had several bona fide autism meltdowns, though I didn't know what that looked like at the time. I had just started a contract job that was very flexible, my book just came out, I was coaching volleyball and the sites actually made enough money that I could kind of wing it. Heck, most of the previous year I didn't even work outside of writing the book. Volleyball was the thing that provided the most purpose.
We were doing counseling, but as was the case in my high school and college days, I didn't really know anything about getting into or maintaining a relationship. I was still of the mind that you met someone, made out with them a bit, and she was your girlfriend in a super committed relationship. That's why I was single so much. Later in the year, I got into a separate relationship that was complicated, but it did show me that an attractive woman could be interested in me. That fall I coached high school volleyball, lost a lot of weight and had moments of positivity and independence that I never had before. I don't think I had a choice.
The next year I met Catherine, and I learned from her about how you ease into a relationship. I wasn't proactive, but fortunately she was. We were a strange pairing at first, different in a lot of ways. She was so much more social than I was, whereas I found being that social level to be exhausting. (Again, wish I understood all of this sooner!) I was ready to really dive in, so I asked her to go to Vegas with me right after the divorce was final. Going on a trip with someone reveals a ton about how compatible you are. It was an epic vacation, I'm sure in part because of the newness of it. But we were all-in, with gratuitous PDA and such. I figured out what dating was supposed to be like.
We spent almost a year together, and when we did split, it was not overly dramatic. I think the bottom line is that dating someone in vet/med school is destined to fail, something they even warned her about in orientation. Fortunately, we stayed friends, and now our families vacation together. She helped me reset, and I learned a ton about relationships just by dating her.
After we split (well, mostly, aside from still more mini-trips), I got into a rhythm of dating. A lot. The Internet made it easy to meet people, and I went through a period of time where I think I was going on one date per week. I understood what wasn't working for me, and for the first time in my life declined further dates. It was during this time that I had my one and only one-night stand, which was one of the most bizarre things I've ever experienced. That's probably not a story suitable for a blog post!
Then, a little more than two years after the big split, I met Diana. We were married in under two years, pregnant right after that, and moved to Seattle six months into marriage, all during a serious recession. That period of change was intense, but frankly I needed it. It wasn't that Cleveland sucked, but I definitely needed to get beyond it. Everything has felt mostly fluid since then, in mostly good ways. But after a decade of kind of wandering around without a lot of deliberate direction, the split necessarily triggered a maturing process that I didn't know I needed.
This is where people say things like, "I wouldn't change a thing," and I kind of think that's nonsense. Yes, I am happy about the outcomes, but if I could have the same outcomes without a lot of the pain, hell yes I would accept that situation. The split was only one source of pain. I realized a lot of things about people I thought would be looking out for me that did not even acknowledge what I was going through. I struggled in a lot of ways that had less to do with the failed marriage and more to do with how inexperienced I was in important life stuff. And my therapist at the time was pretty shitty, now that I look back at it.
I can't believe how much time has passed. I could not have imagined any of the current aspects of my life. If this is how it goes for everyone, I have to imagine a lot of Type-A people being borderline suicidal. How do you arrive at a life you couldn't imagine but are so happy to have? I'm not going to pretend to know what things will look like 20 years from now. It'll be wrong.
The algorithm pointed me to an interview of Jordan Klepper, of The Daily Show fame, by Jen Psaki of MSNBC. While he has been going to MAGA rallies mostly to get laughs, he's also been thoughtful about what he's seen, and he was there on January 6. The thing that stood out in the interview was the bit about young white males being attracted to Trump, because they find some identity in associating with him. That struck me as weird, so I got to thinking about what has changed over the years. A decade and a half ago, I don't think his ascension would be possible. (And I'm disappointed it could happen at all.)
That decade and change ago, there was a developing sense that real equality was not only possible, but that we were headed in that direction. Perhaps naively, a lot of people, including myself, felt like having a Black president was a precursor to a more equitable society. Same-sex marriage eventually became legal, and a lot of folks realized that it wasn't enough to not be racist, we had to be anti-racist if things were ever going to change. Marginalized groups were getting louder, and quite happy to lean into their identity. It was exciting, and kind of a relief to see it happening.
At the same time, social media, which was mostly Facebook in those days, began its transformation into something that was less about networking and more about performance. I mean, that's why we have TikTok. Everyone is putting on a show. That was probably true before, at least to the extent that people presented themselves online in a way that was more polished or filtered than their real lives. With ad markets disrupted and monopolized, the concept of "influencer" was born, which mostly involves ephemeral performance in a long-tail of people who do whatever it is they do online. This is narcissistic behavior to various extents, which is kind of weird if you lived before it was typical. The point is that all of this lo-fi, ephemeral stuff appeals to an idea that you're awesome and should get your thing. After all, 16-year-old girls are getting their thing by doing synchronized dance moves online.
As a white hetero male, I've always been able to see first hand that advantage that I had over women and people of color. I knew this because many of my peers, especially those who were older, said and did a lot of sexist and racist things. As a Gen-X'er, I also had the, uh, "advantage" of largely being disregarded. I suppose I took up some identity in that, but I think it left me with a choice to find identity in helping others, or in finding some kind of fame and recognition. I've mostly leaned into the former, as my short tenure in radio, mostly pre-Internet-ish, made me realize that being even local famous isn't really that great. But again, not even autism, which I now understand has held me back in some ways, has not been a big enough impediment in my success. I think a lot of Millennials, who were more in that Internet transitional time, kind of caught up with us. This part is largely anecdotal, but stick with me for a moment.
Young white males today only know that performative online world. And that world includes people who are proud of their ethnic or racial heritage, proud of being queer, proud of being strong women, etc. The marginalized groups have had enough. Now, I'm in the aforementioned cohort that got to decide where we could find identity, and I believe many of us found it in helping others, raising people up. I have nothing to lose, and the proud identities of marginalized people does not come at my expense. But what about the people who only know a world where teens bank on making memes, and making everything about you is normal? If you're not a part of any of that, what is your identity?
To that end, I can see why young, white, hetero males feel threatened and without an identity that they can, uh, identify with. I am absolutely empathetic to this. You can't tell them about "white privilege" because they can't see it. They don't have the life experience to see it, and our education system fails to teach them about how human history is a tragedy of marginalized and persecuted people.
Unfortunately, because that privilege is real, and they're willing to associate their identity with a blatant racist and misogynist, they are moving us backward. The question then becomes, how do you reach them? They've grown up in a situation where it apparently is OK to be selfish, even at the expense of others (not to mention be a criminal without consequence). What's even more bizarre is the portion that show strong affiliation with Christianity, even though Christ stood for basically the antithesis of what MAGA folk believe. So now they also feel righteous through a warped view of religion.
I don't know what you do about this, but I can say that I at least understand how we got here. You can't explain ongoing cognitive dissonance to a person with autism though, or at least, not this person. I can't understand people who are so hateful because it's not rational. I also can't understand people who claim not to be hateful that associate with the hateful. And it's not for a lack of trying. I've tried to engage with random people like this, and they always get back to some talking point not grounded in reality, or one contrary to the values they claim to uphold.
It's not my problem to fix, but I want to see it get better. All I've got is allyship, volunteering and donating to civil rights organizations. It doesn't feel like enough.
I thought that the term "enshittification" was just a thing we said in software circles, but it turns out that it's being used for... everything. But let me back up a little.
In software and technology, the term started to show up when talking about the big social platforms. Remember when they were useful and allowed you to keep in touch and the goings on of your friends? Yeah, those days are long gone. They're gone because those platforms only exist to sell ads and increase engagement. You're forced to endure all of the noise to get anything out of it at all, and since the network is not interoperable or portable, you can't just lift and shift your network.
All of it is getting worse, and AI is one of the biggest problems. So much of the "content" on the Internet is written by machines. All of it uses link bait titles like, "This actor makes bold statement about co-star." If this were written in a more classic journalistic style, it would say the names of the actors and something about the statement. It's infuriating that even the entertainment things are going this way. For more important things like Google, they're giving you AI summaries of things instead of showing you the things, which of course is bad because the AI doesn't think critically (although, neither do most people it seems). It doesn't know what's real. This will get worse because all of the things that publish stuff and rely on ad revenue (also from Google) will stop publishing because they don't get any traffic. It's not sustainable. It was bad enough that everyone wanted to be a "content creator" (a totally meaningless designation), but now the Internet is flooded with people and things that aren't even real.
I'm reading on LinkedIn now that basically all of job recruiting is broken. People use AI to spam thousands of job postings, and recruiters use AI tools to find the "right" candidates. Obviously that doesn't work. That so many jobs are remote makes it even worse because there's no geographical limit to applicants. I always preferred to hire from my network, and that would still be the case if I was in a position to hire people. It feels like those days are gone.
Oh, and dishonorable mention to all of the online tooling that the schools use. Most of it is just terrible, and I'm sure the teachers don't care for it either.
The term is spreading to new contexts and variations on meaning. But the intent is the same: Things are getting crappier. Think about how electronic food ordering has changed the relationship with restaurants. The desire for the cheapest goods has led to lower standards for everything (this is also called the "Walmarting" of things). Entertainment is leaning into time-wasting, ephemeral crap online. And obviously, you've seen what's happened to our government and politics.
I'm generally optimistic about things, but I feel like so many things that used to inspire wonder and curiosity are getting crappy, or the crappy things are obscuring the good stuff. I hope that this is a temporary situation.
I absolutely love The Last of Us. I've played both games, and of course the TV show brings the whole story to a new level. I really liked the game Fallout 4, and the TV adaptation of that universe was pretty solid. Both work on variations of a total breakdown of society as we know it. The Fallout universe is a little less interesting, because it deals in a post-nuclear scenario, meaning that a lot of stuff gets totally wiped out. Oddly, both games spend time in Boston.
The Last of Us is more about people and their relationships, despite the infected zombies. And as I said, the remnants of a thriving society are still around, if largely reclaimed by nature. Since the games mostly take place decades after the outbreak, presumably all of the young people are born into the weirdness, which is to say that they necessarily have some level of survival capability. But what if it was you, at the beginning of the end?
My first instinct is to say that I'd be toast. This is rooted in the joke that I make when someone talks about liking to run, and I ask what's chasing them. That might be true, I may not last very long. However, I think about how my mind seems to change in the worst of circumstances. If I have an obligation, say to my wife and child, I know that I pivot and become more matter-of-fact about things. For example, when Diana's car got totaled (the first time), I dutifully got Simon out of bed, went to get her and did whatever was necessary to keep him chilled out and wait for the FHP (which never ended up coming because of a fatal accident down the road). I go into this mode any time there's a serious travel disruption, too. That one is weird because I'm a nervous traveler under normal circumstances. Heck, as terrible as the whole Finn situation was, I largely kept it together for the benefit of Simon for most of the time. I sometimes adapt because I have no choice.
But those are time-boxed bad situations. They don't last indefinitely. An apocalyptic scenario never ends. That's where I think it can get you. At what point do you get too tired to keep fighting? Sure, humans probably still have that animal part of our brain, but it's like raising an animal in captivity. If you let it go after being hand fed by humans, it's not going to know what to do out in the wild. We've all been hand fed.
Cheerful subject, right?
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.