the onion is making me cry

America's toughest job must be at The Onion. Honestly, a satirical news agency in these times? Who could 'satire' the Washington REDSKINS announcing the removal of a former owner from the team Hall of Fame for... being a racist? At least The Onion was on point when the slower, layer by layer approach of satire was more appropriate.

Weeks ago, some watched John Oliver (possibly) reach the apex of his career with the 'Police' episode of his HBO show and made a similar point - comedians are now our best source of news, particularly when the news is often a source of comedy. I've realized this week there was nothing special about this observation because comedians have always made a beeline to the truth. What's changed is that these days the skill seems more important.

When we peek cautiously, fearfully around every corner for Fake News while our so-called great media institutions hide behind paywalls, we appreciate those who take responsibility for getting right to the point. It's no surprise that comedians, having traveled the road to truth and back every night in their careers, are equipped with the courage and skills to reach audiences that have no confidence in our traditional news sources.

leftovers #2: proper corona admin, vol lxiii - i'll get corona (mosquitos)

Hi folks, last week I needed four thousand words, today just another hundred required to clarify this newest threat...

I'll get corona... from a mosquito.

This is one of those 'gotcha' threats, where my concern for a minor issue gives me temporary amnesia regarding the reality of Corona. The mosquito is a trickster of the highest order, a two-stepper that lured me onto the dance floor during a run at the end of May.

I was jogging along, masked up and all, when a mosquito flew into my eye. I instinctively applied the time-tested method of removing said mosquito, sticking all eight fingers and one thumb into my eye and rubbing around at semi-random for ten seconds until I figured the mosquito was done and dusted.

Let's hope the thumb I kept out of my eye was the only digit laced with the deadly virus.

sixes and sevens

The most trivial of the changes brought about by the pandemic was in my running route. Instead of crossing Mass Ave while in Cambridge to run against the direction of traffic, I waited to cross until after I'd returned to Boston and therefore ran with traffic as I crossed the bridge. This was solely motivated by social distancing. My new route avoided the pedestrian ramp connecting the bridge to the Charles River Esplanade. My estimate is that the switch halved my pedestrian encounters on that bridge.

One fun detail of my new route is the radar gun at the halfway mark. There is some graffiti decorating this public technology - someone has spray painted 'SPEED LIMIT - 25 MPH' on the sign in block letters, so neat that it looks like every other speed limit sign I've seen in my life. Silly, I always think, because the speed limit throughout both cities on such roads is 25 MPH, everyone knows this, so on the main bridge connecting the two there is no need for the reminder. The radar gun is a firm but fair judge, and never tires of flashing its simple observation to law-abiding citizens. Sometimes I speed up as I approach and delight in seeing '6' flicker up to '7', but this is a rare joy because most of the time a car will zip by and restore order - '27', '31', even '38'. I've seen all kinds of numbers appear on the screen, but the only thing the numbers have in common is being above '25', unless of course it's just me.

At the end of the bridge is the famous intersection, Mass Ave and Beacon Street. The fame isn't just because everyone knows these streets from another block, or another town; the intersection is famous because people are hit by cars here, over and over and over. This article cites fourteen crashes from 2009 to 2012 alone, and that's only accounting for vehicle-bicycle collisions (1). Who knows what the number is if you add the next eight years, or could tally up all the unreported collisions, or include vehicle-pedestrian, er, crashes?? The folks coming through this intersection every day might not know all these details, so there are reminders everywhere - memorials, traffic markers, and the standard set of traffic lights are all placed to keep this number locked in place, forever, at whatever it happens to be right now.

Still, the next increment is only a matter of time. A six is always a moment of confusion from a seven. I was in this very intersection just a month ago, standing next to Anita Kurmann's ghost bike, already feeling uneasy because of the three cars that had ignored the walk signal and zipped across my path. Finally, there was space, so I made a belated start across Beacon Street toward The Digital White Guy. I'd made it just past halfway, the tireless signal likely preparing for its change to The Flashing Orange Hand, when a horn unloaded from what sounded like three inches behind my head. I looked back at a turning LMA shuttle, one corner of it already in the crosswalk, the details of an angry face that I instantly forgot when it accelerated out of sight a second later. The only thing I still remember is the moment familiar to me from riding a bicycle, when my heart pounded like dice bouncing across what I felt, and I wondered again why following the law was never enough to beat the house.

Footnotes / TOA's fake Onion headlines?

1. But if I have my helmet on, I'll be OK!

Imagine the headlines if some lunatic shot a biker in this intersection:

Biker crashes into bullet!

And I'm sure the story itself would be a delight...

"The victim was not wearing a helmet at the time of the crash."

proper corona admin, vol 67 - feeling like rubbish

The pandemic has changed too much in just four months. One week ago today, a man in a wheelchair down by Haymarket asked me to throw away his empty coffee cup. I said no. I have no idea what happened to the cup.

It's too bad when doing your best means doing your worst, and I'm sorry it had to be that way. But given all the vulnerable people in my life, I can't say I'm sorry about my decision. I'm not going to behave any differently in the future. If the same situation comes up today, I'm going to walk away again. The next thing a stranger gives me will be a vaccine.

pop corona admin, vol lxvi - everything becomes wrong

Another round of pop culture complaints? It's the last HAPPY FRIDAY of the month, so sure, why not?

Cho Chang was trending... again

My original plan was to make this the topic of my traditional Harry Potter portion of 'Pop Corona Admin' but as I wrote I realized I should do a full post. Something to look forward to in July, reader.

I thought I would set the stage here and find a good tweet (Tweet?) along the lines of 'white characters get names like Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore while (the only) East Asian character gets Cho Chang' but the search process cost me thirty minutes on Google that I'll never get back. Oh well, have a look yourself if you get bored today.

Jim Halpert sucks

While I'm here tearing down old favorites, I had fun reading some articles explaining why Jim from The Office is a five-tool butthead. I used to enjoy watching the early episodes but I stopped tuning in for no real reason around Season 3. This is pure speculation, but in hindsight maybe I realized I had no interest in a show that made a hero out of Jim.

Forrest Gump - do not try this at home, or outside of home

The pandemic is forcing us all to reconsider everything. Let's not forget to add Forrest Gump to the list. The idea that people would sit next to Forrest at semi-random on a bench and he would tell them his life story without repeating any part of it was always a dubious construct. But these days, the very idea of talking to a stranger for more than a couple minutes turns my stomach.

leftovers: proper corona admin, vol lxiii - i'll get corona (epidemic)

One more threat that didn't make Sunday's (very generous) cut...

I'll get corona... from an epidemic.

No doubt about it, one key factor in maintaining our public health has been the level of seriousness. When shop owners say 'no mask, no service', you know we're in The Middle Of A Real Thing.

But what happens when we downgrade the pandemic to an epidemic? Let's not rush to relax, folks, until we feel fully in charge of the situation.

false on average (the running average deficit)

Those who read TOA with one eye on the abacus will have surely noted an odd phenomenon - despite my claim that this blog produces an average of 300 words a day, the true 'on average' (!) number is always going to be higher (1).

Like with any accounting trick, there are a couple of ways to demonstrate the reality. Let's say I post a 900 word essay every three days. One stat is the running average - see below (an asterisk (*) denotes a new post):

*Day 1 - 900 words per day
Day 2 - 450 words per day
Day 3 - 300 words per day
*Day 4 - 450 words per day
Day 5 - 360 words per day
Day 6 - 300 words per day

The budget method looks like this:

*Day 1 - +600 words
Day 2 - +300 words
Day 3 - on budget
*Day 4 - +600 words
Day 5 - +300 budget
Day 6 - on budget

Both methods tell the same story, but which is better? I think it depends on the context. I prefer running averages if I'm using the information as one factor among many in a decision. For example, I use running averages to track my writing time, and I try to prioritize writing if the average falls below my goal of 90 minutes per day. But this is only a guide, it's not like I cancel all my plans so I can write like mad anytime my average drops below the target because decisions about writing include too many other factors. If it's 1AM and I'm tired, I have to go to bed regardless of the suggestions made by my writing metrics.

The budget method is better for the TOA word count because my main concern is tracking reader workload. The budget speaks in the language of accumulated reader fatigue at the start of the next post and the metric helps me understand the appropriate length. I'm currently massively above budget (a shade over 2000 words) so it's probably going to be two posts per week until I'm back under budget.

I don't think most people worry too much about the relative strengths and weaknesses of budgets and running averages, but I highly encourage taking a moment to reflect on the most appropriate method. A budget is ideal if you allow it to dictate quick adjustments to your plan, but if you are going to stick to the course then perhaps a running average paints a better picture.

Footnotes / endnotes

0. TLDR...

Casino gamblers 'budget' by leaving the debit card at home - once the cash is gone, the night is over.

1. This post increased the TOA budget deficit by 125 - we're 2300 words in the red since May 31.

This doesn't even consider my accounting principles, which include 'buy one get one' Sundays and only counting posts if they exceed one hundred and fifty words.

proper corona admin, vol 65 - the book stand

I consider myself open-minded, but I think I'm old enough to start calcifying in certain worldviews. Here's my first stand - for as long as we can do only one thing at a time, books will always be the superior reading medium.

I'm comfortable planting my flag on Book Hill. Nothing is certain, but the perfection of the book will remain intact. What most people forget about 'rapid change' is that it generally means an idea being honed to perfection. Books completed their refinement process centuries ago.

A successful challenger will need to beat the book's biggest strength, the ability to demand and enable focus. We'll see. The current crop seems intent on beating the book's physical limits, using the digital form to improve or expand access, storage, and transmission. All great ideas, but until people can process two or more books simultaneously, these will only be niche concerns.

proper corona admin, vol 64 - library reopening

According to the original press release, today is the first day of Boston Public Library's New Normal. At some point, I'll go to Copley and pickup my next reading from a designated 'contactless pickup' area, the details of which are (somewhere else) online.

I'm not sure what to expect, but it probably shouldn't be too complicated. It struck me the other day that in The Good Old Days, I would grab my books from a 'hold' shelf, use a self-serve checkout kiosk, and never come within six feet of a soul. My point is that the library already ran a system very close to Pandemic Proof.

I'm not expecting huge problems just because the library is loaning out the Berenstain Bears again. It's everywhere else, where pre-COVID business practices brought me within touching distance of all others, that I remain wary of as we tiptoe through Phase 2.

proper corona admin, vol lxiii - i'll get corona this summer

Folks, you may have heard the whispers, maybe from the WHO or not, out here on the streets, we keep our six feet, and get back into our living - the vaccine! Don't cry, don't raise your eye - the vaccine is coming!

I understand why people are optimistic. A corona vaccine is the silver bullet, aimed right at the heart of this awful virus. It would put us right back to work, restart all our social activity, and give us a second chance to fix some of the regrets we've carried with us for the past three months. Optimism alone is a great thing, but optimism about a real possibility is a priceless gift. It helps that in this case it's almost appropriate to let nostalgia about the past be our fearless guide, for the vaccine would be the closest thing we'll ever experience to time travel. Marty, set the DeLorean for Pi Day!

Of course, one problem with the past is that it is mostly comprised of facts, and these facts tend to ruin the party if you make the mistake of acknowledging them. Here's one fact - a vaccine produced in under one year would be unprecedented. Now, you'd think this would be a more commonly cited fact, given that it's coming from historians, or as I like to call them, experts about the past, but apparently this whole push to listen to the experts has certain exceptions. Let me catch you up, vaccines take years just to approve, and then there's the matter of distribution, since these aren't produced in batches of seven billion, so we'll probably have to go through some whole ugly exercise about who 'deserves' the vaccine first just so we know how to line up for a dose (queuing six feet apart, of course). Long introduction short, I think we need some time to sort out critical admin about the vaccine, but luckily I think we have a few years to figure it all out before it becomes a pressing issue.

So, what does that mean for today? Back in March, I read that each sick person will infect two and a half other people. This was before we started implementing our various quarantine measures, so hopefully we've lowered the number. But some have warned that if we aren't careful about reopening, we'll push this number up, and it will be more like reintroducing. This brings me to another fact - many people are still contracting the virus. Those concerned about a second wave, I say don't worry about it, because it seems like we are still in the first wave. It's just a fact, another windowsill on which this pie in the sky is cooling, and it means we need to be smart this summer. Just because the infection numbers are a little lower than they were in March doesn't mean the virus is magically gone.

Anyway, long introduction short for real this time, no vaccine = people get sick, and 'people' is a group that includes me. To put it another way, my conclusion is that eventually, I'll get corona.

But where? It's like a fill in the blank quiz:

I'll get corona... ______.

That's the key here, reader. Warren Buffet once said something along the lines of - tell me where I'll die, and I'll never go there. Makes sense to me, but what does that mean for my weekend? It means - tell me where I'll get corona, and I'll never go there. I've been keeping close track of this over the past three months, honestly there hasn't been much else to do, and this week I finally collected all my thoughts and notes to put together this comprehensive answer key to the above question, loosely arranged from top to bottom by likelihood.

Grab a drink, we're gonna be here for a while, at least you know you won't get corona from reading... probably.

I'll get corona... from a test result.

Let's start with a (false) positive! Or, maybe not. One of the seemingly more confusing ideas about coronavirus is 'asymptomatic transmission', the idea that someone could be infected and pass the virus to others but will never show a symptom. This means that if I take a random test, it might come back positive, and though that would be news to me, it would shock nobody - some officials are hoping speculating that asymptomatic transmission of the virus is widespread, meaning reopening is almost perfectly safe. Regardless, if I don't want to know I have corona, the best thing to do might be to avoid a test.

I'll get corona... from the hospital.

This is one of those 'A for effort' situations because hospitals do more than everyone else COMBINED to help us combat this disease by bringing the fight to our most hallowed battlefield - the body. But hospitals cannot escape a fundamental law of infectious disease - in close quarters, sick people infect other people. Indeed, TOA has written (pointlessly, endlessly) on the fact that handwashing, our current #1 weapon against the pandemic, was invented in hospitals to combat the deadly efficiency with which doctors and nurses transferred infections from one patient to the next. And of course, idiots like me stumbling onto hospital premises these days don't help this matter at all because we add to the headcount without increasing disease fighting capacity, so for all kinds of reasons this summer I'll make sure to avoid the hospital.

Side note, if we must equip police with military-grade equipment for a protest, can we apply the same standard for every medical professional dealing with a pandemic? Thanks.

I'll get corona... (to and) from work.

As I wrote about a few weeks ago, I perceive that even in the pre-pandemic days most of us didn't have too many close contacts per the definition of contact tracing initiatives. However, this equation does change for people with a certain type of job, or anyone with a certain type of workday. Add the fact that I would commute to work via mass transit, another great incubator for close contacts, and that I work for a hospital (see above, though I'm rarely in the medical area of campus) - well, reader, if I want to stay healthy this summer, it would be in my best interest to continue working from home, or even get myself sacked, to ensure that I never ride the train to an all-hands meeting.

I'll get corona... from the grocery store.

First, for the longtime readers who think I have a vendetta against certain stores, let's clear the air - I believe everyone is doing more than their best to be safe. It's just that I get nervous because grocery stores are where I spend the most time around other people - it's basically the extent of my current social life. And honestly, let's be real here, no grocery store was designed for a pandemic, so I'm not blaming anyone or anything.

But here are the facts, a grocery store is a place where you have to literally touch everything, and then those folks who can't shake the habit of inspecting every piece of fruit between here and the dairy section... ugh. After all the fun is over, you then go stand in a line where there is no space to stand, wedged between registers that are three feet apart at best. If a pandemic planned its own invasion, the produce section would be its D-Day, and the green peppers would be Omaha Beach. For me, the best thing to do this summer might be to stop eating, ensuring I cut this clear risk out of my life.

I'll get corona... from a dog.

I guess this one is technically inaccurate, dogs are not transmitters, but dogs require walking and this creates a two-fold issue. First, it forces people to leave their homes, sometimes multiple times a day, leading me to disproportionately encounter dog walkers relative to other pedestrians. Second, since the dog is tied to a rope held by a human, it results in a two-headed hybrid of dog-human that takes up all the walking space necessary for social distancing on the sidewalk. It doesn't help that walking a dog seems to render most humans temporarily nearsighted, or overly interested in looking down at a phone screen.

My favorite is when the human half goes right down the middle of the path, encouraging Fido to whip back and forth in front like a furry windshield wiper, pushing me into the street to be struck by America's original social distancing tool, the automobile. The safest thing I can do this summer might be to walk right down the middle of Charles Street, where there are no dogs or dog owners, and I can at least pretend I chose my own destiny.

I'll get corona... from a car.

Speaking of cars, has anyone from the WHO tested the parked cars? Some of these Teslas haven't seen an electron in months, which means no one's taken them to the car wash, and surely their dirty hoods and grimy trunks have accumulated months of coronavirus particles falling from the spit, snot, and blogs of the passersby. And is anyone disinfecting the door handles? If I come into contact with a car this summer, I might as well lie down right there in the street, and hope that when people resume driving excessively someone will mistake me for a speed bump and put me out of my misery.

I'll get corona... from a biker.

I don't deal with bikers that much but it seems like every encounter is a scene from 300. Is there really not enough room to pass? How many times have I stared into the dead eyes of bikers as they veered into range for a head-on collision? Or how about those geniuses who bike against a one-way, never realizing that I don't look both ways when I step into such roads? During one memorable incident, I had just enough time to put two hands onto someone else's handlebars just to protect my legs from being run over. For some reason, good biking during the pandemic means (1) not braking, ever, especially if (2) you are mingling with foot traffic. I guess this means I'll spend my summer walking wherever (1) a bike can't pick up any speed, which often means (2) nowhere near the sidewalks, paths, and roads built specifically for foot traffic

I'll get corona... from a runner.

Another hugely popular population even in the best of times, runners probably doubled their approval rating during the pandemic thanks to an obvious commitment to never veer off course, ever again. Did I get this memo? Of course not, I've been stopping like a sucker for most obstacles, but my fellow runners have made it a sport to pass one foot to my left (or even worse, to my right). Just as a biker seems incapable of stopping, the runner seems eternally committed to the straightest possible line. Let's hope the fastest route from A to B doesn't C you infected with Corona. I might experiment this summer with a zig-zag approach to walking, all in the name of safety, because it might give the runner an opportunity to avoid a collision by speeding up or slowing down without ever, you know, deviating from the planned route. Coincidentally, this zig-zag idea might also help me with my next concern...

I'll get corona... from jaywalk chicken.

This game used to be FUN before the pandemic introduced consequences, the way it works is everyone lines up at the crosswalk, then when the light turns you all GO at once like a crazy version of Red Rover. The catch is the other side is doing the same thing, so now you have two sides charging at each other like, uh... I guess the appropriate movie analogy is Braveheart. Anyway, these days there are fewer people out so there is room to avoid collisions, but there are times I find myself destined for an impact that would make the old Monday Night Football theme song blush. A couple of times I've almost clucked all the way across the street, only to step aside in the same direction as my opponent, causing us both to almost faint from the absurdity of a close call created solely by the mutual indecision, acting to avoid disaster only when there was no other choice.

I'll get corona... from Corona Island.

What is Corona Island? A new FOX reality show? No reader, Corona Island is actually closely related to jaywalk chicken. This is my name for the pandemic-specific failed application of a common strategy for crossing a multi-lane road: first, you get to the median while there are no cars on your side, and then you wait on the median until the other side is clear to finish the crossing. So you walk out to the little crumbling median and stop, so far so good, until you realize that some other idiot crossed with you, and now you are both standing there as far apart as possible which is three inches. Never thought to account for others in your plan, right? Don't worry, it's a microcosm of our current situation. Maybe you'll meet your True Love on Corona Island, but it won't be me - I'll remember to never cross the street until the signal changes (though of course I will remain present to the dangers of jaywalk chicken).

I'll get corona... from a couple.

OK, we resume our regularly scheduled programming where I get myself uninvited from all future dinner parties, anyway I don't actually have problems with couples too often, most times they are in lockstep (not literally) and pull off complicated maneuvers that turn a two-wide pair into a two-deep column. I suspect these couples met in marching band, such is the intricacy and timing of the movement.

But others, oh the others, maybe they are practicing for the three-legged Olympics, they are literally in lockstep, and come marching down the road with that look of glazed over determination. My options in this moment are (1) the gutter or (2) a high-risk, no-reward group hug. I'm not a hugger yet, so this summer I guess I'll just need to wear old shoes for those gutters, unless the couple in question also has a dog, in which case I'll make like Corona-tawney Phil and go back to my apartment for the next six weeks.

I'll get corona... from a chinstrap.

This refers to individuals who wear their face covering around their chin, like they had an embarrassing shaving accident, or think a condom is a male sports bra. For some reason these good folks have figured out that they will bring their homemade PPE within one inch of being effective - literally one more inch and the curve flattens a bit more.

But NO, they just can't be bothered to get the mask up and over that last little hill, also known as the bottom lip, which I stick out anytime I see an approaching chinstrap. I don't know, maybe it's considered cool to wear the mask so low, like we used to think baggy shirts were cool, which is why I still have a shirt from sixth grade that will fit by Christmas if I gain thirty pounds during The Second Wave. Regardless, there are some folks that you cannot reason with, so if I see any chinstraps this summer I'll do the sensible thing and duck for cover.

I'll get corona... from a concert.

I actually covered this a little bit a month ago, but to recap - I don't think bagpipes are an effective coronavirus filter, and this probably extends to other wind-aided instruments like saxophones, trumpets, or sidewalk karaoke. It's probably in my best interest this summer to pretend that music only exists on Youtube.

I'll get corona... from my mask.

Let's take another break from being high and mighty, it's exhausting, I realized that of all the little contact threats around - doorknobs, this laptop, my phone, and so on - it's probably my mask that is the biggest problem. It goes on my face which means if I ever need to adjust it I'll have to touch it, and that's basically in violation of the most consistent health recommendation - don't touch your face! And of course, we've heard that homemade masks aren't for personal protection, they are just for 'others', so if I touch my mask with my infected fingers then won't I just hoover up all that mask-bound corona? Science is tough, anytime I think about it I get more confused. I'm not sure what to do about this yet, but perhaps this summer I should experiment with a two-mask approach, so I can remove my outer mask without risking infecting myself, kind of like the logic of the catenaccio defense.

I'll get corona... from lunch.

I go the market and they tell me to wash my purchases. OK, great advice, but how? I'm supposed to wash my hands for at least twenty seconds, using soap and presumably the hottest water temperature my skin can handle (which for me is probably on the relatively low side). So should I get the Dove out for this eggplant? How about a blueberry, should I put some detergent on a toothbrush and have at it? There is simply no chance that I haven't already eaten something covered in corona. This summer, things will really heat up because I'm going to eliminate the need for washing by cooking everything at 400 degrees.

I'll get corona... from rollerbladers.

OK, let's get back to the latest episode of 'Old Man Yells At Cloud', this time I want to discuss rollerblading, which seems to combine several of the previously highlighted tactics. The most important is probably that note about dogs walking back and forth like windshield wipers, this fact actually applies 100% to rollerblading given the nature of the movement, meaning at any given time to properly distance from a rollerblader you need to cede about three extra feet to each side to account for the projected skating path. Add to this problem a particular talent among these folks for wearing The Chinstrap, and you have a recipe for easy community transmission. Luckily, I don't really encounter too many rollerbladers, or this group would be at the top of my list, but this summer I'll make sure to keep my walking close to the edge of the path, since rollerblades can't really operate unless they are in the middle of a paved road.

I'll get corona... from the millennials.

I'm technically a millennial - and now that I actually waste spend time online I'm more of a millennial than ever - but for the most part I continue to feel the same way toward my tribe as I always have: distant socially.

Just last week, I was walking down the Charles River and having a look around at all the little groups of two, four, and eight, all 'socially distanced' despite individuals being within a snapped yardstick of each other. The highlight was a group of almost twenty twenty-somethings sitting in the grass alongside the path. It was like that kissing nursery rhyme - twenty millennials under a tree, bare-ly so-cial dis-tan-cing! As I walked closer, another millennial wearing a knockoff Untuckit shirt approached the group and announced "hey guys, I just want to remind you about social distancing." Don't we all? Just knock it off, right? Too bad that in order to remind someone about social distancing, you have to violate social distancing yourself. It's a war for peace out here, folks.

Luckily for me, this is the first threat that I can handle without having to change my current behavior - I'm just going to continue ignoring those damn millennials.

I'll get corona... from the boomers.

It's always uplifting to see youthful vitality return to our aging brothers and sisters. These days, I see the boomers come out of retirement to direct a loud, sarcastic, and sometimes angry question towards those half their age - where's your mask?!? And I assume nobody responds because there are too many good answers to pick from - so all of a sudden social solidarity matters? I thought masks would trickle down from the economic activity of the rich? Maybe we can treat this like a war, and use deficit spending to buy masks for everyone?

Anyway, I can't imagine how much fun it is right now if you have a medical condition and cannot wear a mask - go outside, and everyone yells at you! I don't have a great solution here, but when someone I don't know starts talking to me, I just turn around and go somewhere else. Maybe we should do the same when someone without a mask comes into view.

I'll get corona... from kindness.

An unspoken sadness of the pandemic has been the way it's changed my interactions with strangers. A few weeks into lockdown, I was walking through the Public Garden when someone walked over with a phone and asked me to take a picture of him, his wife, and their small child. In the past, it would have been a chance to learn a little more, and possibly wish tourists a nice time in my city. These days, I shake my head and walk on.

It's the same kind of problem when someone asks for loose change. Generosity is not even a consideration because the process of walking over and potentially passing along the virus from my hand is far too risky. And I'm finding it harder to enjoy the kindnesses that come my way. Even small gifts like my neighbor bringing up a delivery package to my door are ruined by the mental machinations of how to open the box without rubbing the cardboard all over my face. I guess the best thing to do is to make this The Summer of Scrooge, and refuse the generosity of my fellow humans in all their forms (except of course, my readers - thank you for reading).

I'll get corona... from packages.

To add to the above, although I understand that delivery is a safer form of acquiring certain critical goods and services, I can't ignore that safer has no direct relationship to safe. These days, it's like an ancient riddle anytime something arrives on my doorstep - it would be less confusing if the Sphinx herself worked for UPS.

Plus, there is the added complicity of participating in a system where we laud certain forms of work as 'essential' while ignoring that some of these workers are out there because of necessity. Our society will simply deny most people their survival unless they take on the dangerous wage work of delivering pizza, running shoes, or magazines to people who can afford to not afford the risk. I can't believe I'm saying this, but we need driverless cars ASAP, and must find a way to distribute its associated value to ensure that we are truly keeping as many people out of harm's way as possible during the next pandemic. Until then, it means I'll have to remind myself all summer that most delivery staff are touching doorknobs all day, so I'll need to be strict about safety while opening boxes.

I'll get corona... from my stupid basketball league.

My favorite email of the pandemic came from the commissioner of my recreational basketball league, sent early in May when the Governor's office produced its first rough sketches of reopening - we're sure you are excited about the reopening plan! Let me think about the answer...

Although I do like the idea of returning to normal, I must remember that this basketball league means (1) physical contact with complete strangers in (2) groups of at least ten that (3) takes place indoors and (4) will almost certainly force me onto public transit to get home. I thought about responding with (5) a request for the league's testing protocols or (6) their plan if anyone playing did report symptoms after a game or even just (7) a copy of any communication from state officials clearing recreational sports leagues for reopening. Instead, I settled for (8) no response, deciding that this was more productive than sending - no, I'm not excited about the reopening plan.

I'll get corona... from my own unreasonable anxiety.

If this post has a point (not that it should, because nothing ever does here on TOA) it's this - there is too much out there to worry about without inventing added concerns. Among all the other reasons, there is a simple physiological factor - the anxiety isn't going to help the immune system, which is still a major factor. Being healthy isn't exactly enough to prevent becoming infected, but being sick means the same as usual - you become more vulnerable to infection from something else. So for now, although acknowledging every concern is important and smart, calculated risk assessment is the new normal. The most important thing to remember this summer is the difference between a real risk and an imaginary one, and the need to manage the former while keeping a firm check on the influence of the latter.

toa preview - i'll get corona

Hi reader,

Tomorrow's post was inspired by this quote attributed to Warren Buffet - tell me where I'll die, and I'll never go there. I've tried to apply it to the pandemic, but the end result was more like a smirk at all the COVID-19 infection risks I've identified over the past three months. Maybe the more applicable quote is from Marcus Aurelius - death smiles at us all; all a man can do is smile back.

Anyway, I know a popular Sunday activity is to skim longreads (more smirking), so let's consider the below my user guide for a time-constrained Sunday reader.

If you have one minute...

...read 'from jaywalk chicken', 'from Corona Island', and 'from a chinstrap'.

If you have two minutes...

...read 'from generosity' down to the end.

If you want to argue...

...read the intro.

If you want to roll your eyes...

...read the rest.

beans before mass

Longtime TOA readers will know I tend to fart in church. It's the special way we misfits just let it out, timing (literally?) be damned. Trust me, it's not always my fault, I try to restrain myself. I've never eaten natto for breakfast.

But folks, there is a big secret in the TOA business - it's bull. You don't round up to truth, there is no average truth, you just say the truth. The 'average' part is discretion, the how and when, but the words must be true.

So here's the truth, run through my discretion filter a million ways until I realized I had to apply it to myself - I've been working on a little TOA reading list, in the same spirit as some of the other reading lists making the rounds, and I'm flunking my own 'Hello Ladies' index.

reading review - this could be our future

Despite the head-scratching logic of repeatedly using boxes to describe what seemed like outside the box thinking (2x2 grids, a dubious overuse of 'bento') I found this to be an enjoyable, easy, and agreeable read. Strickler, perhaps best known as the CEO of Kickstarter, seems to be coming around to my view of value - it's not just a question of financial maximization. I admit this makes me a biased reader, but I'm just happy to have someone of his stature, success, and conviction on the team.

My notes from the book are here.

This Could Be Our Future by Yancey Strickler (March 2020)

Strickler sprinkles a number of interesting observations throughout his book that support his broader point about rethinking value to include more than just financial considerations. For example, he notes that in the USA 62% of personal bankruptcies are caused by the health care system, and that chain stores return a smaller proportion of their earnings to the local economy than do smaller local operations. He also brings up tactical examples that aren't obviously related to his idea yet I found interesting, such as how retailers try to open locations that do not force driving customers to make left turns. The most memorable comment was that continuity is a critical ingredient for a society, which I found valuable as an organizing principle for all of these otherwise loosely related observations.

I couldn't fully agree with everything Strickler said regarding a 'default' worldwide setting to maximize financial return. First, most of the world needs to maximize financial return since most of the world doesn't have money. The data is tough to nail down, but from my estimate it could be up to 75% of the world that can be considered low income or impoverished. If we use the data he cited that people are better off increasing their income until they reach around $75,000 per year, then that 75% number goes up even higher. I think much of what Strickler writes about applies only to people like me (though this isn't necessarily an issue, since we are the only types of people who would read this book without tearing it to shreds, on the grounds that it advocates a too-slow approach to solving poverty).

The most important note in the book was that ideas can only survive on their own merits for so long. In order to become something more significant, an idea requires support (and supporters). In my managerial work, I've recently found myself placing an increasing emphasis on making decisions that harness the existing energy in the team, using the logic that such decisions already have 'support' in the form of obvious, present energy. I'm going to look for the right way to blend Strickler's thought about supporting ideas into my evolving framework so that I am not just identifying the visible energy, but also thinking about where it may be lurking just out of sight, waiting to beckoned out onto the main stage.

TOA Power Rating: Three bentos out of four.

Footnotes / director's cuts

0a. Book recommendations

Sometimes one book will lead me to another, so I thought I would start highlighting these connections as footnotes to the main reading review.

Strickler references a book called Not for Bread Alone, written by Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of Panasonic. A few things about the book caught my eye, notably Matsushita's idea that a businessman had a duty to earn a profit so that part of it could be taxed, or the revelation that Matsushita thought an appropriate 250-year goal for a consumer electronics company would be to eradicate poverty in the world. Not sure if that is big or hairy or audacious enough goal for the academic types to reference in business books, but it's good enough for me to add Not for Bread Alone to my book list.

0b. Book idea

Strickler points out how single-stream recycling might be an example of financial concerns causing broader system problems. Single-stream means collecting from one bin rather than having separate bins for each material. This means cheaper collection but it complicates the step of converting used material into a new product because the recycling plant must sift through everything. If the overall output of new product goes down, then this reduces the overall effectiveness of recycling in exchange for an optimized collection step. If The Goal ever needs to be recycled, perhaps this example is the starting point for the next edition.

leftovers - proper corona admin, vol lxii - toa enters phase 2.5

The plan for today was to list the seventeen books on my 'reopening' library request list. But it takes a long time to list seventeen books, so despite having all the time in the world... maybe next week.

I mentioned Hannah Arendt's Thinking Without A Bannister yesterday. It's my last borrowed item, but it's so dense I feel no danger of hitting Zero Books. In fact, when I finish in July I should just reread it right away. If books are brain food, then this is a bowl of freshly steamed broccoli, and worth a second helping.

But reading isn't all about building brains. Lighter reading relaxes the mind for its toughest work. And of course, like with any diet variety is more important than eating just broccoli. Poetry, short fiction, memoirs, it's all coming back soon, but I'm looking forward to the sum more than any individual part.

proper corona admin, vol lxii - toa enters phase 2.5

The Great Social Recession of 2020 hit me just as hard as anyone else, but I've been lucky that The Corona Lockdown hasn't imposed the same damage to my individual concerns. I didn't lose my job (and working from home is actually a huge improvement), Haymarket has remained open on weekends, and I've kept up with my Three R's - reading, running, and writing. On the surface I've been doing fine, or about as fine as it's appropriate to be these days, but I must admit it's hard to remain fully confident in the future despite knowing we are probably past the worst of the pandemic.

It was therefore a huge boost to see libraries at the bottom of the Phase 2 reopening plan, which began last week. Nothing dramatic happened on June 8 - with doors and windows still shut, the books remained closed. But the whispers, oh the whispers, they tell a different story, indicating that a lot of behind the scenes work is going on to ensure the fastest possible return for borrowing services. The most recent news came in last night (editor's note - June 11) when I learned that the main branches in both Cambridge and Boston will reopen within a week of today for their version of curbside pickup. Would you like fries with your Maniac Magee? YES PLEASE. Asking for a friend here, but how many books is too many to request during a pandemic? Let's set the over/under at 16.5.

I split my seventeen books evenly across the two libraries - nine and nine. You may be wondering, how is that an even split? I decided to request Eureka Street at both libraries, just to ensure I get it ASAP. I am unusually impatient to reread Robert McLiam Wilson's novel. Its enduring lesson - there is a difference between a politician's actions, and a politician's supporters - does not require my elaboration in this election year. But events from the past month or so have cast new light on this lesson, particularly from the angle of how inaction is its own form of complicity. I think the time is right to read this book again and mine it for new insights. I'm looking forward to reporting back with my conclusions.

Interestingly, the book I'm currently reading - Hannah Arendt's Thinking Without A Bannister - is making some timely commentary of its own. In Arendt's mind, inaction and complicity have a stronger link than I recall being suggested by Wilson. I wonder if there is a clean explanation for how the authors reached their respective conclusions. One idea is that experience counts, Arendt having lived through WWII in New York City as a refugee from Germany via France while my understanding is that Wilson was in Belfast during The Troubles. But as I noted Sunday, it might be another case of how fiction and nonfiction serve different purposes, with the latter giving Arendt the distance necessary to make firm, decisive statements about her subject matter that Wilson could not afford in a novel he focused around people.

proper corona admin, vol 61 - laundry day

I always put on a mask before I go out but for some reason laundry day is an exception. I never remember on laundry day. I usually make it to the sidewalk with my full basket before I realize I'm unmasked, and then I have to decide if I should bring all my stuff back inside with me or if I should just run really fast up and down the stairs.

It's probably because my main mask is in the laundry basket, so I need to use one of my alternates - a white undershirt (I use my black undershirts for Big Outings, like Haymarket). The undershirt mask isn't an unusual situation, but it always starts by realizing my regular mask is still drying from a washing, and without this first domino in the chain I never remember that I forget.

sometimes i run and think, and sometimes i just run

I always have these really good TOA ideas pop into my head while running. But for some reason, I often find that after I've taken a shower and drank my third first first third beer of the night, the world-class inspiration from a couple of hours ago no longer seems worth the execution. It's almost like whatever I thought happened in my head never happened at all. For example, during one run at the end of April I decided that I should write about one run during the lockdown. But which one, which run? I worked out various ideas as I went, settling on a 'stream of consciousness' style that would weave my scattered observations and insights from all of my running around the typical rhythm of any five-mile run. I was excited to finish up and get started and perhaps this led to a small adrenaline boost - by the end of the run, I was flying. Later that night, I started jotting down a few bullet points for an initial outline, but I already knew the ending - what is the point of this? It was going to the garbage, as is tradition with rubbish, and soon enough my bin rattled with another thing that didn't happen.

I have no idea why this 'not happening' happens all the time. Maybe it's the excitement of running, those endorphins kicking in to give me a dose of that fabled "runner's high" and causing its lesser-known side effect of terrible ideas. Maybe I'm simply oxygen-deprived and can't assess my own thinking. In any event, I thought it would be helpful to go back and try to understand what happened on that night. How could an idea that was so exciting it literally made me run faster end up discarded just hours later? This week, I finally rolled up my sleeves, fished out that outline from a few weeks ago, and tried to make sense of this recurring yet always perplexing chain of events.

There were a few things about my list that jumped out at me. First was the issue of the structure. The 'composite run' concept is always difficult because it imposes an equality across ideas so long as they fit under one broad label - I thought of this while running! The problem is, not all ideas are created equal, so I needed to trim my list down before I could start working. A great rule of thumb for composite concepts is to ask - can this idea exist as its own post? This deals with the problem of weak ideas borrowing from stronger ideas - when this happens, the strong idea often loses its own identity in the process of propping up its weaker counterparts. Once I started removing the best ideas from my outline, I found that my initially compelling concept was left with very little substance for the post, and there was little possibility that I could make the sorry leftovers exceed the sum of their parts.

This brings me to a second point, which is that the constraints of my structure would force me to write fiction, much in the spirit of those who despite the best intentions suggested by their 'based on actual events' labels almost always admit that a list of truths does not make for nonfiction. Yes reader, no true thing is ever true on average (!). This was kind of a strange realization because one thing I've thought about while running is how writers decide whether to write fiction or nonfiction. What is the thought process that results in those extraordinary efforts, just to invent a world where you can express something that could simply be stated in a nonfiction piece? In any event, it struck me as a little too meta to create a fictional setting just to explore the idea of creating a fictional setting, so I opted out.

It leaves me here, sitting in the scattered debris and rubbish of my own rough drafts, and still wondering why a writer chooses fiction as the best way to deliver a message. Why not just tell it like it is? It would surely save some time, and might even be more effective. I think there are some obvious issues like personal safety that are relevant concerns, and I've written about these situations when I've reviewed books like The Accusation, a collection of short stories smuggled out of North Korea. Bandi knew why handing out copies of 'On Stage' in downtown Pyongyang wasn't a great idea; I wonder if Galileo ever considered expressing his views in the form of a novel or a play, perhaps centering the plot around star-crossed lovers.

But I think there is a strong case to make for fiction whenever the writer cannot bear the risk, or is simply unwilling to take the chance. The only consistent context I can think of for this reluctance is when the writing is about another person. The best fiction writing always seems to be about someone, but in the writing it's never clear if it's about anyone; what's abundantly clear to me is that there's not much benefit in making this explicit. In the context of both an election year and these past few weeks of nationwide protests, I think I have some guesses about why Robert McLiam Wilson wrote Eureka Street instead of unflinchingly describing the people in his life. It's easy enough to understand why - most people only get to know a handful of people well enough to write about them in such depth, so to describe them so baldly in nonfiction seems to me like it would risk valued relationships.

It's hard to write about other people, but more importantly it's dangerous. As far as I recall, I've never done it on TOA. When I look over my discarded outline for this 'composite run', it's jarring to see the references to so many specific people - a former colleague I ran into, another I ran past, and endless thoughts about people I haven't seen in weeks, months, and years. And within the composite frame, these references would have to be told truthfully, honestly, in a way that would turn others into content. Not here, or maybe I should say not yet, because although I'm perfectly willing to cross this line someday, I'd prefer to have a larger platform, one that constantly reminds me of the consequences in the event I mishandled such a major responsibility.

I guess in my usual meandering and methodical manner, we've reached a TOA staple - the eye-rolling moment where I have some Big Idea no one asked for and which has no functional value. Today, I propose a redefinition of fiction, or perhaps just a testable hypothesis. Here goes - if a writer must describe a specific person, and especially a close, living personal contact, it will probably have to be fiction. The risk is just too much, even if the portrait will reveal some eternal truth about the human condition, because if we've learned anything in lockdown its that our close relationships are precious, and not worth trading for content. It's odd that this is all I accomplished, a wandering loop that simply restates my original position - I've made up something based on real events. I guess I'm used to circling back to the start, what with all my running. But the line between fiction and nonfiction is important enough for this distinction, one that transcends the difference between fact and fake, or real and invention. It's not what the line is or where it is exactly, but why we need a line, one that we refuse to cross. Fiction must be about people, an account of a lived life, and an invention of what cannot be made up. The rest we can call nonfiction, a confirmation of what happened, and a refutation of all that is invented.

This leaves me with the last big question, something I appropriately added at the very end of my outline before I chucked it out - what is the point of this? The world hardly needs another personal essay doomed to irrelevance in the endless depths of the deep, dark web, but I think we keep churning out reflections just to prove to ourselves that our lives are happening. The mirror shows us what we know is there, but we have to hold up our end, and have a look every day. On some of these lockdown days, I will go an entire day without speaking, and I've learned that despite the running and the thinking my life is in some ways not happening unless I write and write until I see my own reflection.

Early in lockdown I heard many hopeful predictions about a 'creative renaissance' - I disagreed then, and I have no evidence today to refute my guess. But I bet something has happened, I bet a lot of people have picked up a pen or turned on their computers just to do this, answering the question what is the point of this, stubbornly toeing the line between fact and fiction until the newest reflection emerges, confirming again that during these weeks when nothing happened yesterday and nothing will happen tomorrow, something still happened today.

winners and losers

Jaylen Brown has been my favorite Celtic for a couple of seasons. It isn't about basketball, though I do like his game. It's about him as a person, most of which I learned from The Guardian in an article I first linked in February 2018.

Here's Jaylen:

"There’s this idea of America that some people have to win and some have to lose so certain things are in place to make this happen... It’s a machine which needs people up top, and people down low."

I learned in the article that an unnamed NBA executive thought Brown was "too smart for his own good". I've had the same thing said about me. I suspect that when I saw the phrase in print alongside that above quote, sometime during my twenty-fourth month of unemployment, it struck a chord with me that has resonated to this day.

the last debate

I've noticed one really important change in my conversations from the past couple of weeks - listening. I'm not used to it, I'm used to debating. We learned debating in school. We memorized facts, analyzed patterns, built arguments. You could be right or wrong, but never both, or neither. We became educated adults, knowing that real, open conversations always end with a winner and a loser.

I've written about this in the past. In January 2018, I linked it to handwashing. In October 2018 I added that facts are not trump cards, as I did in April 2019.

Debates are not conversations, and often both sides lose. Sure, you might disagree, but you already know that. A lot of us need to shut up and listen, to throw away our education, so that we can finally learn.

reading review - how to

Hello! After almost four months away, it is my pleasure to bring back reading reviews, the TOA staple where I direct your attention to more worthwhile reading material than my own crap. We'll ease back into the routine with "the world's least useful self-help book" from the author of webcomic xkcd, and those who want to read more can either go explore that website, or just check out my book notes.

How To by Randall Munroe (March 2020)

How To did a great job of simplifying, applying, or translating intimidating scientific concepts into relatable examples. For instance, 'natural equilibrium' makes more sense when Munroe says it means the slowest player always becomes 'it' in a game of tag. The explanations for why forty-eight minutes is the maximum speed for traveling around the world (1 G of horizontal acceleration) or what faster than light travel might look like to an outside observer (simplified relativity) were a little more challenging but I thought they accomplished the same conversational tone of the tag example.

The most useful idea is one of three candidates:

• Sin means treating people as things.
• Forecast with averages in stable or long-term areas, otherwise use persistence methods (checking and rechecking conditions).
• Historic name popularity within a group can help us guess the average birth year.

I wasn't fully convinced by the suggested implications of the fact that pirates rarely buried treasure (just once, apparently, in all of recorded history). I think by now enough people have internalized the original fiction to become able imitators. It's probably not enough to justify following a map in order to locate a specific pirate's treasure, but I've heard enough stories about people finding buried 'treasure' to think the imitators have turned fiction into fact, at least in the sense of making the dirt more valuable hunting ground than meets the eye. Still, I'd say there are more productive ways to spend time, or to make money.

I liked the thought that mocking people when they admit to some ignorance is a great way to shut down future discussion. Mockery is an antidote for nothing, unless you have been falsely accused of competence. Something I will always try to remember, and perhaps make some use of in the remainder of this election year.

TOA POWER RATING: Three pirates out of four 

proper corona admin, vol 60 - breaking top 100 news

I sometimes get bored and Google 'true on average'. I only check the top 100, it's been pure iktsuarpok for four years, just me and the horizon every other month, scanning for nothing... nothing... nothing...

Wait...!

TOA is now on page eight of the search results! Yes reader, as of this moment (June 6, 2020), TOA is one slot behind an average calculator (impressive) and one slot ahead of a research paper that uses both 'propensity' and 'parametric' twice in the opening sentence. I'd link them here, but I'd hate to sink my own ship.

Now that I'm basically off The Dark Web, my new TOA goal is to be cancelled. Why not? At least I'll have been relevant, even for one post.

My Sisyphus impression resumes tomorrow, with my first reading review since COVID-19.

proper coronoa admin, vol lix - toa enters phase 2

Hi reader,

Back in May, when I first heard the word reopening, I must have rolled my eyes and brewed my tea. The dull drudgery of those dark days sent all positive thinking straight to my spam folder. And although my inbox continued to fill up with one depressing item after another, we somehow kept on track, and yesterday Taxachusetts made it to Day 1, Phase 2.

I'm willing to do my part, and not just out of civic duty. I'm ready for it, ready for reopening! But Governor Baker forgot to list TOA on his plan, so we're on our own. Face coverings on, please, and maybe stand six feet away from the screen while reading, but otherwise I don't anticipate major changes. The new normal will look a lot like the old normal - three hundred words a day on average, with word counts zeroed out for all short posts and 'buy one get one' on Sunday. Proper Corona Admin will return its borrowed stage to Proper Admin (though the former promises to visit often). I will resume making sly references to Arrested Development, but Tales of Two Cities is likely done - there is only so much to say about biking, and looking at what I last wrote, maybe I should have called my most recent post 'The Last Dance'.

The big news of 'reopening' is reading reviews. Just moments ago, I finished my first reading review in months, and I was surprised by how normal it felt to put together my thoughts about a book. I suspect I produced a slightly improved product than in the past, perhaps because I loosely followed the 4-1-1 style I described a couple of weeks ago, or maybe the time off did me some good. I think the future will be these shorter reviews alongside a link to my messier notes (like in yesterday's post) though longer reviews will still come around, and some of the reviews I finished months ago using the old style will likely remain unedited. We'll see the first of these new-style reviews tomorrow, and hopefully ramp up the pace as reopening picks up steam.

As always, thanks for reading. Stay safe, stay well, get in touch.

In the next month... of True On Average...

1) Jaylen Brown, we should all be too smart for our own good.

2) Odds are, something about running.

3) Your future is my past.

choosing discretion

Writing is selection.

I noted this last year in my review of John McPhee's Draft No. 4, a book filled with writing advice (see my book notes for more). As a middling writer, I'm not the one to assess it, but I'll endorse it.

However, he omitted a vital skill - discretion. Perhaps as a professional writer he became accustomed to outside help and forgot about discretion. Lucky me, I've been told this is among my rare skills, so I guess I didn't need to learn it from a book. Based on the past week, many do.

It can be the most thoughtful, truthful, and compelling piece of writing in world history. It can be a master class in the art of selection. But without discretion, without considering when to put your work into the world, it isn't writing.

Writing is selection, but so is discretion.

upset culture

One thing I was looking forward to in 2020 was paying more attention to the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Now, I haven't watched 'March Madness' closely in years, and I guess Corona intervened to make sure this didn't change, but trust me I was only going to follow certain statistics about the event, not necessarily watch any of the games. Reader, my interest was purely intellectual, sparked by a statistical anomaly from last year's tournament, and I sensed an opportunity to reprise my popular role of Sourpuss Contrarian, using an eloquent blend of fact, logic, and long sentences to ruin everyone's fun with a post or two here on TOA.

My curiosity grew from a moment last year, just a few hours after the tournament committee released the 2019 schedule, when the betting odds defied the expert determination of the committee. While the talking heads rattled on with their storylines and office workers around the country started filling out brackets, something odd happened in the betting market - #12 seed Oregon briefly became the favorite over #5 seed Wisconsin. By the time the game tipped off the bettors had restored a two-point edge to Wisconsin, but there was no chance I would forget the line movement, particularly after Oregon rolled to an 18-point victory. Now, one of the four #12 seeds beating a #5 is hardly unusual in March Madness, in fact those who follow the tournament know that history suggests at least one #12 will win its opening game. It always seemed like the #5 was jinxed - up until just a couple of years ago, the #6 seed had a higher first round winning percentage than did the #5 seed. Others have looked closely into this phenomenon and reached various amusing conclusions.

However, I have yet to see anyone say what I think is obvious - the tournament committee does a lousy job. They are supposed to rank the teams, yet it always seems like they get a few things wrong. I know it's really tough to do the whole ranking perfectly, there just aren't enough regular season games, but I'm not suggesting they need to have a perfect record, or even close to perfect. I just don't think it's too much to ask that a #5 always be favored over the #12. At minimum, such a result throws the competitive integrity of the tournament into question. You'd think that last year's Oregon-Wisconsin farce would have become a major story, but in the ESPN recap I link to above there isn't any mention of Oregon having been favored earlier in the week. So why wasn't the most interesting aspect of an uninteresting game featured as part of the story? I had a hunch about what was really going on so I went straight to the source. And sure enough, NCAA.com makes it loud and clear, presenting the story in big lettering - OREGON UPSETS WISCONSIN (1).

I can't really blame the NCAA for jumping on the upset headline. The tournament is admittedly much more fun to watch with these 'upsets' and the 5-12 games are arguably the most anticipated of the tournament's first weekend. If people are enjoying the games, even if they are anticipating an 'upset' under false pretenses, well who am I to blow bubbles in the punch bowl? The last time I went out of my way to watch a tournament game was in 2018 when I heard that #16 UMBC was leading #1 Virginia - a #16 seed had never beaten a #1 in tournament history, so I walked down the street to catch the historic moment. Upset alert! I know it for a fact, upsets generate ratings, so it's natural to expect more talk of 'upsets' come tournament time. But if someone had told me after the game that contrary to the seeding the markets had favored UMBC over Virginia, well, I guess I would have been upset, too.

This raises an important question - what is an upset? My idea is that an upset is when a competitor beats a more skilled, talented, or accomplished opponent. This is a compelling concept for audiences and it seems to extend far beyond sports. The problem is the upsets we often celebrate in sports don't necessarily meet the definition. By all accounts, in the above example Oregon was a competitive equal to Wisconsin, but because a few powerful people formed a poor opinion everyone else got excited about an 'upset'. It seems like each time we have a real upset, we have three fake ones to go with it, mostly based on ill-informed experts and their predictions. Gradually, we are cheapening the idea of an upset. Instead of the usual talk - OREGON UPSETS WISCONSIN! - we might benefit from a more honest assessment about the outcome - why would any expert suggest Wisconsin was so much better than Oregon? And why did a bunch of us pretend we agreed with them?

One of the subtler benefits of such an approach might be for the mental and emotional health of those supporting the losing side. It's bad enough to lose in any sense, but to have the added surreal feeling of I can't believe this is happening feels a little like unnecessary salt in the wound. The passive curiosity a neutral observer enjoyed during the Oregon-Wisconsin game came at the cost of those Wisconsin fans whose emotions were cleverly exploited by the attention seekers in charge of marketing the game. Was it worth it? I'm not going to suggest that we don't have some control over our reactions, particularly to sporting events, but in any other context when a large, powerful group manipulates the emotions of powerless individuals, you'd have to at least think about it as a possible case of bullying.

But does 'upset culture' have an application beyond the sports world? I think so. The idea to write this post in the first place came a few days into March, not because the tournament was approaching or that the pandemic had cancelled it, but because I was getting sick of hearing about Joe Biden's big 'upset'. It just seemed like at the root of the story must be a sloppy premise - primary elections are a pretty easy competition to predict, you just need to do the hard work of finding out who people are going to vote for before they cast a ballot. Although I'm sure some people genuinely don't know who they are voting for until election day, for the most part I feel someone doing their polling job correctly should be able to predict an election outcome. And yet, it felt like March Madness all over again - #12 BIDEN UPSETS #5 SANDERS! It's just a gut feeling, but I think a better headline would have been - lazy polling fails to correctly predict election result.

I'm sure the political pundits out there, the true experts, are shaking their heads - don't you remember 2016? Upsets are nothing new, kid. I do remember it in fact, I remember it like it was yesterday. In fact, I was just thinking about a conversation I had in November 2016 because an amusing result of the pandemic has been a chance to speak more frequently with neighbors, just as was the case with the election almost four years ago. As I chatted with one neighbor early in lockdown while we both stood just outside our doorways, I remembered how I had talked to her predecessor in the days after the election while we had stood in those same positions. Four years ago, my neighbor was stunned, he was just flabbergasted, the polls had said otherwise, and he was right, the record backs him up. I found it really interesting how close the polls were to the final score. They demonstrate clear evidence that the pollsters were working hard at their jobs, gathering the best available information in the weeks preceding the election. As the polls approach early November, you can see the results drift toward the final tally - around 48% for Clinton, 46% for Trump. He knew those numbers and he just couldn't wrap his head around the result - what happened? Surely, this was a true upset? It seemed to me like he forgot that the final score is calculated a little differently, like judging a basketball team on made shots without accounting for three-pointers, or using yards to assess helmet football teams while ignoring touchdowns.

The most upsetting thing about upset culture is that it sows resentment, often conjuring it out of thin air. Think about it - if you lose fair and square, your reaction is so much different from when you lose but feel like you should have won. You might feel anything across a broad range of emotions - embarrassment, regret, disappointment, anger - but I think these are all roads that lead to resentment. You become resentful toward yourself, questioning the effort you didn't put in and lamenting the opportunities you let pass. You become resentful toward your opponent, dismissing his or her skills while explaining away the result due to some degree of luck. You become resentful toward the competition, picking out flaws in the rules to which you originally agreed and openly questioning the integrity of the outcome. Instead of finding the mental toughness to do the next right thing, you become ruled by bitterness, anger, and spite.

The lasting image I have of the 2016 election was that conversation and my realization that although my neighbor was right to be upset, he had chosen his feelings. He had allowed the media to tell him a story about the election and he had gone along with it, dutifully sowing the seeds he had accepted because they came from the experts. He had laughed on cue in September and had looked up the precise definition for 'margin of error' in October. On November 8, there was a favorite, which meant there could be an upset, so he settled in with his bracket and watched the results. I'm not sure what's happened since our conversation. He moved out within the year, and left me a very nice note along with a recommendation to download a liberal financial podcast. I bet he's good at picking #12 seeds when he is supposed to, and gets really excited if it wins. I hope his blooming resentment is directed toward policy decisions and not influenced by expectations generated through polling. It just seems like a stupid way to live, almost as pointless as posting essays into the endless void of internet nothing. A podcast that doesn't lean much at all said it best - I tell everybody, regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, you're not going to win... now what? If no one wins, then someone is taking a cut, but for some reason the news isn't revealing the identity of the house.

I'm starting to feel the air changing a little bit around me in the context of this pandemic and resultant lockdown. I don't think it's going to be back to normal anytime soon, in fact personally I think normal is over, but of late we are obviously starting to look a little more at the big picture. At some point, the focus in 2020 will turn to the election, and I'm sure it will be delightful. We can choose either an elderly man who thinks he doesn't have to do anything to win black voters, or we can choose Trump. We can choose a candidate who remains defiantly unapologetic regarding multiple allegations from women about inappropriate physical contact, or we can choose Trump. We can choose the man who feels having been in the White House before is good enough to get him back in there, or we can choose... ah, you finish this one, reader.

Anyway, there will be endless opportunity this year to be manipulated by media outlets big and small, our emotions yanked and pulled until our blood pressure is permanently elevated. We can choose to be upset or we can stay calm until we know the real story. I think it's vital to keep something in mind about the rest of the year - there will be an election, which means we have a choice. But I'm not referring to the act of checking a name off on the ballot, I'm referring to our reactions. For most of us, our vote won't change the final outcome, but we should remember that every day is an election day, and a new opportunity to make the right choice.

Footnotes / The Real Reasons

1. TOA is amateur as well, but that doesn't stop me!

I actually think the 'real reason' ESPN would not mention the line might have to do with the NCAA and amateur status, but anyone who really believes March Madness has nothing to do with gambling is probably still excited about Oregon's big upset... I'm going out for a walk.

toa preview - upset culture

Hi reader,

Yesterday I mentioned that I was afraid of wearing everyone out by piling hundreds of words each day into your stuffed inboxes. One idea to bring down the number is the 'preview', a few sentences about an upcoming post, and debuting NOW.

Tomorrow's post was a true slow roller, and writing it took over three months. I hatched the idea early in lockdown when March Madness was cancelled and it slowly evolved from there, shifting with various events, insights, and conversations. The key moment was Joe Biden's infamous appearance on 'The Breakfast Club'. There were many lessons learned from his conversation with Charlamagne the God, and none of them very uplifting. Perhaps at the bottom of the list was the silver lining that, finally, I had an opportunity to end my post, and I chose to take it.

proper corona admin, vol lviii - practicing energy

Hi reader,

It's been a little calmer around these parts over the past couple of days, so I'm once again scanning the TOA calendar and looking for an opportunity to schedule my pointless little post, sitting in its sorry limbo since Sunday night. Appropriately, the topic for the post is reopening, so wait and see feels like the best approach. And who knows, maybe next week is the best time, doesn't TOA seem like a good fit in Phase 2, alongside hotels, sidewalk brunch, and my personal favorite - non-contact practices for adult recreational sports leagues. We ain't playing games in Massachusetts, folks. Do you think Governor Baker consulted Allen Iverson?

The official word will come on Saturday, pending the progress of certain key virus metrics. The easy story, perhaps headlining the Right Things To Say segment, is whether the large gatherings from the past week will cause a surge in cases. There is logic behind that thinking, but let's remember that our knowledge of the virus remains limited, and in such cases intuition can often lead us astray. Unless every protester gets sick, let's try to remember that there are plenty of other plausible explanations for a new surge, and that we are playing a game despite having never practiced. In any event, the metrics are the metrics, so if the infections go up then that's pretty much the end of the story, at least in the narrow context of whether we move to Phase 2 next Monday.

For now we remain in Phase 1 for a couple of more days, which means a few more days of planning for reopening. My first experiment will be some very short posts - under 150 words, ideally a bit lower. I didn't pick this number by accident. The consensus seems to be that most adults read between 200 and 300 words per minute, so if you account for the time it takes to open the email, load the data, and do the reading, a 150 word post is about a minute of work. I'm wary of publishing too many long posts because people may become tired, literally tired, of reading TOA, but I trust my readers have the energy for a minute of hard work. In my wildest dreams, I hope the short posts are just enough to whet the appetite, perhaps a form of practice for the big game, so that I can keep everyone's attention when my loyal subscribers open the next post and see that little scroll bar shrink, shrink, shrink until it's no taller than the line I'm crossing now with my verbosity.

It gets to a larger idea that's driven my managerial work over the past few months. The big change in how I've approached my current role is my new priority on energy. By this, I mean really understanding the difference between the work that energizes my team with the tasks that we complete because we are professionals drawing a paycheck. Part of this is a reflection of my self-education, with certain books and observations from the past four years bringing me fresh insights that I've applied to my work. But a significant influence is my personal experience from the same period. I've simply seen the difference for myself. There is a gulf between the work that creates and replenishes energy with the work that drains and eliminates it, particularly in fields where there is no such thing as practice, and often it takes nothing more than time to reveal the chasm. It's worth finding the difference as early as possible so you set the right course at the outset and position yourself to make the continuous, incremental effort, every single day, that leads to lasting, permanent change.

Phase 1 will become Phase 2, maybe on Monday, maybe not. But it will happen, and bring with it a new opportunity. Some will finally get back to work, others will feel better as things start to look more normal. Some have discovered entirely new causes that make pre-pandemic life a quaint distraction from the work of redefining tomorrow. Some have turned thirty-three, and will be considered old for the next few months. All of us will need energy, and the more energy we have the better. In what might be the last few quiet weeks before the pace of life picks up again, I can hardly think of a better task than thinking about what creates energy for us, and making the necessary adjustments so that our world is forever renewable. When it comes to preparing for the game of our lives, a game that will resume soon enough, I can think of no better way to practice.

the toa newsletter - june 2020

Hi reader,

On Monday, I delayed a prepared monthly newsletter to share my real time thoughts. I apologize to the true creatures of habit, I know it's hard to change, and now is hardly the right time to introduce the new challenge of starting a month without the usual crap TOA newsletter. I took another look just now at the newsletter I originally prepared and I'm going to delay it for a few more days, maybe a week. I'll even give it a new, possibly clever name that marks it as a collateral descendant of the original concept. This shouldn't be too much effort. Longtime readers will not be surprised to hear that there was very little 'timely' information in the post, so I'll likely publish it with minimal changes. But I'll wait until the time is right.

In some ways today has been similar to Sunday. I went for a walk earlier this evening. The streets were empty and void of the negative, tense energy that was so foreboding on Sunday. It started to rain as I entered the Public Garden. The ducks floated easily over the occasional ripple caused from each lonely raindrop. About halfway around the pond, a park officer stopped me on my walk and told me they were closing soon. I wasn't being kicked out, I wasn't even being asked to leave, I was simply receiving useful information, but I knew it wasn't a normal moment. I've lived in this neighborhood for six years and although the park posts hours, it never closes. I understood that if I lingered much longer, I risked becoming collateral damage. The ducks kept their silence, gliding stoically over increasingly obvious waves, their composure obscuring the frantic paddling below the surface. I'll be back to the pond soon, probably tomorrow, when the time is right.

On my way home, I walked down Charles Street. Two blocks from home, a large truck, possibly an eighteen wheeler, came barreling down the middle of the road. I didn't get a good look, but the driver seemed to be a police officer, based on the reflective yellow I thought he was wearing. Moments later, I turned into a liquor store, and got the true 'word on the street' - apparently the police had information that suggested there could be violence in the area again tonight. Back out on the street, I realized that many of the windows left uncovered on Sunday were now boarded up. There were no cars parked along the sidewalks. My neighbors are not as willing to borrow against the future as they were on Sunday, or at the very least unwilling to put up the same collateral. The boards will come down and the cars will return, when the time is right.

And that's where we pick up the story, with me in front of the TV again, watching the news coverage between these paragraphs. My very certain guess is that nothing major will happen. If Sunday was an earthquake, then tonight will be an aftershock. On Sunday, thousands marched into town - tonight, hundreds marched. It's hard to tell what is going on near the State House, partly because the news keeps cutting to Brockton, where the police are out in force to face down a group much smaller than the one seen Sunday night in Boston. This is one of the many scenes that have become familiar viewing over the past few days - protesters threatening to become rioters, police threatening to become military, each side waiting for a sign from the other, willing to remain in place until they see a signal of change, waiting until the time is right.

These days, it's not an unfamiliar feeling. We've all been willing to remain in place until we've seen some signal of change. The government is leading the way. Over the past three months, they've met at that State House and worked tirelessly on a plan, collaborating with experts and community leaders throughout the pandemic. The centerpiece of the strategy is that nothing will reopen until there is evidence of change. Without evidence of change, no one in the State House will accept that things have gotten better. They understand in the context of the virus that it's not enough to just say things have changed, you need to see evidence of change. So why has it been so hard for so long to apply this same thinking to questions about social, class, and race issues? Why has it been so hard for so long to apply this same thinking to questions about the justice system? Surely, the time is right.

People have come out and shared their message all week. They have asked for change, pleaded for change, protested for change. We want equality from a society of inequality, so things must change. It's a difficult moment because some things cannot change during the course of one protest, or one week of protests. Some things will change after a lifetime of protests. Some things, like the fact that George Floyd died after being tortured on America's streets, will never change. But what can change needs to change, and no matter how long change takes, the first step is evidence of change. What I see now on the screen and what I've seen over the past week is a mixed bag. In some moments, such as when police have joined kneeling protesters, there has been evidence of change. And in others, such as when police have used tear gas to scatter kneeling protesters, there has been evidence of no change. Though the moments of solidarity have been crucial, the ongoing indifference is more significant, and from these instances come the reinforced sentiment that as it relates to protesting, it's obvious that the time is right.

The one thing sure to change is the outward passion and energy of everyone protesting for George Floyd. There is evidence of that already in how the numbers have changed after each community's initial protests. There is evidence that most cities and towns seem to have reached their peak in terms of total public protesters. Some protesters will redirect their efforts to civic commitments, others will work through social circles or community programs. Some will remain on the streets and continue to speak out, others will simply move on to something else. Soon, on the surface all will appear calm. But underneath will remain all that churning energy, hidden by the steady hands, the turbulent energy that maintains the status quo always just out of sight, always just preventing change. No affordable healthcare, widespread poverty, underfunded public schools, overcrowded prisons, rigged application processes, casual stereotyping, all of it and more propping up the stoic facade of order and justice in a society of inequality. The specific protests for each and every one of these issues will come when the time is right.

But for many of us, the very act of public protest feels out of reach. We may not live in a city, or may fear for our safety. We may hate crowds, or sense no connection to the message. We may feel that protest is ineffective or even counterproductive. But for each and every one of us, there is an arena where we can fight inequality. Some have found their calling in this moment, and will continue to fight in George Floyd's name long after others have gone home. The rest of us must remember to keep looking for our arena. There is no fight too small in the battle for equality. It can happen at work, at school, or in the community. It can happen tomorrow in a peaceful crowd or next month in an individual crusade. It can happen wherever you see inequality, and can become the evidence of change. It must keep happening, this fight for change and equality, because so long as inequality exists, the time is right now.

the toa breaking newsletter - may 31, 2020

Longtime readers will know that I've often ushered in the start of a new month with a newsletter. June was no exception, but at this moment - May 31, 2020, at around 11PM - I've made the rare TOA decision to delay my planned post for at least a couple of days, and replace it with a fresher perspective.

It was a simple decision, really, because I've spent the past couple of hours sitting in front of the TV, just a few blocks from the chaos, hearing echoes outside my window of the sirens, explosions, and helicopters that are coming through on the news coverage. It's been a sickening night. I've seen people hit by cars, fires lit all over the Boston Common, and looters smash windows that once reflected my own sorry image back to me. It was a no-brainer to delay my planned post because I'm pretty sure whatever I set last week to go up today wouldn't make much sense if I posted it now.

I don't want to get into the routine of posting all my knee-jerk reactions to current events. Quite frankly, in the context of everything that goes on in the world, the range of topics where I hold a valid opinion is very narrow, and I would wander outside my borders very quickly. But I will go to bed shortly with a huge sense of disappointment, sadness, and grief about tonight's inevitability. My dread grew throughout the day. I woke up to the news reporting on another night in a long week of nationwide protests, outrage, and violence. I walked to Downtown Crossing this afternoon and was stunned to see that Macy's had boarded up its windows. On the way home, I watched protesters in large groups headed for Nubian Square, and sensed that I wanted no part of what might come tonight. On a walk just a few hours later, I was greeted by a massive police presence preparing near the Public Garden, and wondered for the millionth time why organizers think funneling a large group of shouting people into one concentrated area is a good idea. As I made my back home down Charles Street, it struck me that it was odd to see only Starbucks with its windows boarded, or that so many cars remained parked on Beacon Hill's streets.

I expect my frazzled feelings in this moment will give way over the coming week to a more familiar sensation, something that I've come to expect anytime these kinds of events are processed, analyzed, and explained to us in the aftermath. I can hear it already in the real-time commentary on these local news channels - the violence undermines the protests. I'm always in half-agreement with this common reaction. I understand the point that if everyone behaved like the average protester, there would never be a problem. But if every police officer behaved like the average police officer, there would never be a problem, either. It's hard for some to follow an example that has never been set.

The full story here seems to be that just as violence undermines the protest, so too does violence undermine the police. But we only ever seem to hear one side of that story, despite the long history of police brutality in this country. Each protest is against a system that prefers to excuse extreme events as exceptions; all that protesters want is for the system to accept responsibility for its failures, and stop these horrors from recurring again and again. All we want is equality. Until then, I'm afraid we'll have more nights like this, where each inexcusable force is met with an equal and opposite reaction, balancing an equation so that inequality will never change.