the polite something to do

Why write? Zadie Smith's "Something to Do", an essay from her recently released Intimations, opens with a brief exploration of this question commonly posed to artists - why bother? Why create? Smith notes the rich tradition of writers taking the longform approach to this prompt, collecting their various convoluted and self-serving reasons under essays with titles like "Why I Write", but in these pieces she rarely encountered her truest motivation, which she suspects is closer to universal than personal - it's something to do. Her insight immediately resonated with me. Longtime readers will recall the many instances when I have temporarily suspended the critical activities of TOA to clear my throat ahead of an unnecessary justification (and I stand by those posts) but if I must be honest, I suppose I could offer nothing more than a token defense against anyone who accused this space of being little more than something to do. And if this accuser were Smith herself, then I might not even bother with my flimsy protest, opting instead to put down my pen and plead guilty as charged. It would show, I think, a necessary humility, for who am I to try and argue with a writer of her caliber?

Smith's essay expands from her revelation, weaving in the fact of this expression's ubiquity in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. I remember a few such examples from my own life as friends and colleagues shared news of passions suddenly discovered during the endless days of lockdown - the baker, the weaver, the podcast host, each emerging from the rubble of the pre-pandemic self. It's something to do, you know? The interesting thing about thinking back to this time is that I recall having a similar thought not just about actions, but interactions. The monthly Zoom, the weekly call, the occasional walk, each of the various connections in those extraordinary days shared one unusual feature - an obligatory check-in on my recent activity, which served no function beyond reminding all concerned parties that my pandemic would be defined by nothing happening. I remember talking about this on a walk with a friend who pointed out something that is fairly obvious to me now - well, making conversation, it's something to do. It's true, and about as true as anything can be - even in the midst of a normal activity like a walk, itself always understood as something to do, was an added layer of the same thinking thanks to the underlying norms of social interaction.

If making conversation is something to do, then we have no choice but to find something to say. It's true even when it isn't - most people, feeling that they have nothing to say, will announce "I have nothing to say" rather than sit there, mute, until everyone hears the message. What my friend was likely too polite to tell me applies here - it's rude to sit in silence when someone else is trying to talk to you, just as it would have been rude to skip the check-in despite my being in the midst of the great nothing pandemic. When we ask each other how it's going, the question is more than just an example of finding something to say - it's polite. The challenge created by all this politeness is that we seem oblivious in those moments when someone simply has nothing to say; politeness has filled the signal of silence with the distraction of noise. There is a certain logic to the observation that if the other person is talking, then surely there is something more to say, but I think we all know this is hardly the case, a hard-earned wisdom from having blubbered through enough small talk - weather observations, safe cultural references, those winking complaints about how much we hate small talk. It seems like a lot of speaking is the result of obligation, with the expectation having been previously set by a long-forgotten authority to whom we remain forever loyal; we talk today like we talked yesterday, then we wonder why our conversations never improve.

One example of such an obligation leading to empty speaking is the televised interview. There are certainly cases where such a format has obvious value - I am thinking specifically of programs centered around the interview - but interviews themselves seem to pop up in all manners of unexpected places. Who thought it was a good idea to interview stars on the red carpet? The fact that these interviews happen while live on air suggests to me that everyone is in on it - since nothing of value is going to be said, let's just air everything instead of pretending certain segments are better fit for viewing than others. This situation creates an interesting cycle of nothing leading to more nothing - the interviewer asks a question and the interviewee has nothing to say, but since everyone knows it's live on air there is no choice but to say something, say anything, to fill the air, because doing otherwise would be more than silence - it would be rude.

If it's hard to imagine what a failure of politeness in this regard might look like, I offer the example of San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. The man is a controversial figure when it comes to handling in-game sideline interviews, with his disdain often coming across as unnecessary rudeness directed at the reporters who are merely doing their jobs. It may seem odd to call him controversial - the fact that even Popovich has described himself as "a jerk" in these interviews suggests a consensus - but the flip side is that viewers find his honesty refreshing in the stale genre of sports interviews. Whether the result of media training or an example of adopting industry best practice, the norm is for most coaches, athletes, and personalities to respond to any and all questions with a string of straight-from-the-can clichés, buzzwords, and truisms. The interview, long considered the purest way to learn more about someone's motivations, is more often a disappointing charade in the sports world - rather than helping us understand more about the game, we are instead reminded that most of conversation remains nothing more than something to do, filled with the incessant banality of something to say.

It's because of these lowered standards that the rare moments of unfiltered honesty become newsworthy events in their own right. Just this past week, Inter manager Antonio Conte caused a minor sensation when he announced that he was dedicating his team's Serie A championship "to himself". The manager of Italy's newest champions elaborated on this remark, noting the many challenges he had faced in this unprecedented season, but I don't think anyone bothered to listen beyond the initial dedication. Observers conditioned to expect a little humility for such an occasion may be forgiven their surprise - managers sometimes refer to themselves as the humble custodians of their respective clubs - and most managers in this situation rush to dedicate victory to anyone who worked hard for the team. But for Conte, this comment would probably have come off as insincere, at least to him. Yes, the players were great all season, but did his predecessor get the same performances out of the team? I'd say ask Conte, but in some ways we've already heard his answer. 

The only reason he might give a slightly different response next time would be due to that old friend of ours - politeness. I'm not holding my breath. For whatever reason, some people just don't have much interest in filtering themselves for the sake of marketing their politeness. It's sometimes challenging to find the line between confidence and arrogance, particularly when it comes to understanding successful people, but I think I've circled around one possibility - it's a question of politeness, where after a certain point one's politeness can disguise arrogance as confidence. It could be that in this way politeness operates as its own quality, one which is unfortunately lacking in the arrogant, but I think it's actually more a question of effort. Conte appreciated his players, a fact evident in their tributes for him over the past couple of days, but he simply wasn't interested in deflecting all credit to them, which in part suggests a certain disinterest in making the effort of politeness. My hunch about Conte is that politeness operates more deliberately for him than it does for others. I think it reflects a certain fact about his success - there was a moment, perhaps many moments, when everyone doubted his ability, and the only thing he could do was prove to others what he already knew about himself. No amount of politeness in the world was going to help him defy his critics. So why would he be polite about his success? It's easy to leave behind the unnecessary, and I bet nothing was as unnecessary for Conte as politeness.

The problem with Conte's remarks seems to have more to do with expectations, set by others who have unwittingly hid the truth of their success each time they've invoked the bland nonsense of "saying the right things". The sports world is filled with figures who have overcome tremendous odds to succeed, who have defied expectation at almost every stop on their journeys, but the commonly told story implies the success was always certain, supported throughout by the proverbial village raising the child, with the future star merely a passenger along for the ride. I worry that, someday, a champion will hold a trophy aloft and declare - this was something to do. There is always truth in modesty, but such a truth omits an important factor.

The truth is that for most of us the path to success begins with underestimation. It begins when we receive a set of expectations from someone whom we grant the authority to sell us short. Sometimes, this authority is in the mirror, and we blindly follow our own prophecy. We accept a destiny for ourselves without recognizing the moment as a crossroads. The confident person looks at the situation and resolves to meet the demands. The arrogant person looks at the same and demands better, not out of some deluded notion of superiority, but because meeting expectations defines a life within constraints. It takes confidence to meet someone else's expectations, but it takes arrogance to do better. It takes confidence to come back from a failure and succeed, but it takes arrogance to set a new standard. It takes confidence to give it our all, but it takes arrogance to give even more.

I think we can do well with confidence, but we cannot do better without arrogance. This is the truth that all successful people understand, but for some reason their explanations always have the feel of a watered-down version. We listen for the keys to success and find ourselves buried under clichés, buzzwords, and truisms, dealing forever in marketing terms rather than the substance. We are conditioned to politeness until we can do no better ourselves - we can't ask the right questions and we can't give the right answers. Why do you write? We've explored so many detours, both for the question and the answer, that we can no longer find our way back to the original path.

I know I write because it's something to do. When I typed my first sentences onto TOA, I was one month into a two-year unemployment. At times, I was living the kind of lifestyle - devoid of action, promise, and human contact - that many of us discovered in the nothing of this pandemic. I write now for the same reason I wrote then - I had nothing to do, and writing gave me something to do. But having said these right things, I know that I've only answered a substitute question, like explaining that I saw the sunrise because I woke up in the dark. Yes, it's something to do, but isn't that all of life? I write now for the same reason I wrote then - I expect better of my time, of my craft, and of myself. When I reflected on "Something To Do", I realized something - just a few months ago I'd written the piece Smith describes in her essay, where I explored the differences in writing fiction and nonfiction before explaining my preference for the latter. As I thought about "Something To Do", I realized that I could do better than what I had written, and that I could do better than what I had read. I think I write for a simple reason - I gave it my best effort yesterday, and I think I can do better today.

reading review - it doesn't have to be crazy at work

Longtime readers may recognize these authors from my previous reviews about Rework and Remote. Their latest release is a blueprint for how to structure a calm company, one that rejects the frenzied attributes often counted among the necessary evils of the modern workplace.

It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (April 2019)

The book's insights into growth were a microcosm of the work's broader message - without careful maintenance, a calm company can quickly descend into chaos. For Fried and Hansson, growth is one risk factor for such a deterioration. The mundane reality of a small company often obscures the threat of growth. A small organization naturally maintains independence among teams because the volume of work generally allows each unit to complete projects without relying on another group. As the organization grows, the company redesigns itself to handle work at scale. This process almost always means specialization, which creates dependencies among teams. The result is that unexpected issues delay the work of not just the team directly impacted by the issue - it delays the work of all subsequent teams in the workflow. The consequence of these dependencies is rushed jobs to make up lost time ahead of a deadline, which corrodes morale due to both the increased workload density in busy periods as well as the loss of flexibility in completing the work.

The authors offer a handful of suggestions for avoiding such a mess. One idea is to slow (or stop) growth whenever teams are exchanging too much independence for the return of scaling up. Another is to grow via iteration - one example is to offer the newest versions of products only to incoming customers, which skirts the possibility of alienating existing customers who are happy with their current product. A suggestion taking a slightly different tone is to simply remain profitable throughout the growth period (which is timely suggestion in this age when many companies pursue growth for its own sake, running up huge losses in the process). Profit helps the mentality within an organization because employees will be less likely to link growing pains with job security, knowing that no matter how bad it gets at least the company can still afford to retain the team.

TOA Rating: Three growth spurts out of four.

the business bro games the office chair

It's starting to look like my current work from home arrangement, which has always been described as temporary, is about to slide into permanent status. This led me to do some thinking about acquiring new equipment to improve my home office. One critical item on my shopping list is a chair - I currently don't have a real chair, working through a combination of standing, lying down, and sitting on the floor. It's been perfectly adequate, in fact I actually prefer it to having a proper desk, but it's worth considering if I permanently work from my apartment. As I thought about it, I came up with a surprising hypothesis - the best type of office chair might actually be a gaming chair. The key to my thinking was a realization that companies and gamers are likely to think differently about chairs, which suggests certain possibilities regarding how the market will influence the eventual characteristics of the products.

In the office, equipment is generally regarded as a necessary evil, and this enables a common mentality that expenses should be driven to the lowest possible level. The best example I can think of to illustrate my point is the story about how Amazon's early desks were recycled doors - apparently, Jeff Bezos went to a Home Depot and calculated that attaching legs to a door was cheaper than buying a desk. This cute story makes a point about cutting costs but it requires the reader to accept an unstated assumption - the type of desk has minimal effect on performance. The reverse of this mentality is that an office will invest in equipment if it improves performance, which is why organizations buy top of the line computers for its design staff. But as far as I know, there is no company out there gaining a performance advantage due to its office chairs, and I suspect if it were otherwise we would know about it. When a company feels like its success can be explained by their office chairs, we'll find out the minute someone like Malcolm Gladwell publishes the story.

On the other hand, the gaming environment is defined by tiny factors, implying that equipment is no exception in terms of competitors looking for an edge. This insight is based on a gamer I know who does speed runs - he tries to break records for completing certain games or levels in the fastest time. The details he describes to me reinforce the theme that every second counts. I once sat down with him to watch a few examples of players speed running games I'd played in my childhood. The one that sticks in my mind is from Goldeneye 007, a first-person shooter based on a James Bond film - in the speed run, the gamer used a grenade launcher to create small explosions just behind him, the force of the blast propelling him forward much faster than Bond could run on his own. These types of examples led me to suspect that gaming chairs would have evolved over time through market pressure to become the most comfortable possible version of the product. Comfortable chairs, I figured, would be preferred by the top performers, which would then influence the novices to adopt the same products, eventually giving the top chair a significant portion of the market share. The subtle lesson from the speed running story is playing out - once a player starts using the grenade launcher to run faster, everyone must do it; the most competitive fields are defined by the non-negotiable tactics used by all its competitors, and these can include equipment if such a thing makes a difference in the end.

This doesn't automatically rule out the possibility of the same mechanism driving the market for office chairs, but from my experience I can guess that offices do not buy chairs based on performance criteria (if I had to guess the criteria, I would go with some combination of design, durability, and price). I'm sure about this partly because I know that many of my colleagues have struggled with office chairs, turning to alternatives such as medicine balls, standing desks, or expensive seats purchased on their own dime in search of a way to get through a day of office work. I have personally experienced a variety of aches and pains that I have blamed on the office chair, which prompted me years ago to build my own standing desk out of recycled cardboard boxes. If offices have been buying chairs for comfort, my personal experience is a highly unlikely outlier. I think this makes sense because from the perspective of a single organization the comfortable chair is a preferred but not required product, and this will remain the case until employees start seeking out firms based on the quality of office equipment. Otherwise, the bottom line is the bottom line - there is simply no need to take on additional costs unless those can be linked to improved productivity.

If I take all of this into account while considering that my goal is to buy a comfortable chair, then the conclusion is obvious - the best office chair for me should be a gaming chair because such chairs were designed (and redesigned) in line with my goals. But is it true? The conclusion certainly has the ring of a classic TOA-ism so I revved up the search engine to see if there was an existing consensus. I came across a few interesting articles, but for the most part they compared the merits of one with the other before helpfully throwing their hands into the air - hey, the chair is up to you! As far as I can tell, there is nothing out there at the moment which offers a definitive statement regarding the better option. This was a little surprising to me at first, but the more I thought about it the more I understood the situation - although I was on the right track, it must be that a comfortable gaming chair doesn't result in enough of a competitive edge to drive the market. Gamers have instead opted for design rather than performance features, a trend which will only strengthen as streaming platforms like Twitch reinforce the importance of looking good on-screen - the chair is a critical part of the presentation.

I suppose the only thing I've actually learned from this exercise is the problem of running with an assumption. Ultimately, it doesn't matter that I can talk about my logic until the sun goes down because the initial assumption - a comfortable chair leads to better gaming performance - wasn't relevant to how gamers made decisions. This is the nature of assumptions, and perhaps those who succeed know something more about them than the rest of us - when to ignore them, when to use them, and when to switch. Bezos, after all, saved a lot of money because he ignored a certain assumption about what a desk should look like, but as the company grew it started to use regular desks. And those speed runners know that the grenade launcher trick works up to a point - too much enthusiasm and Bond's health bar will run out. The chair question, I suppose, requires a similar answer, and maybe I'm sitting on it - a year and a half of working without a chair hasn't been a problem at all, and some of those aches and pains I once associated with the office chair have gone away. The best chair might be the office chair or the gaming chair, but as the article said it's really up to me; the best chair might be no chair at all.

leftovers - how to do nothing (riff-off)

Hi,

I had just a handful of additional thoughts about Jenny Odell's How To Do Nothing, which I wrote about earlier this month. Why not have a classic TOA riff-off? As usual, the thought as it originally appeared in my book notes will be in italics.

Information overload - which often means without the necessary context to help with processing - leads to a sense of something missed, as all the information seems important yet we are unable to comprehend the sum. It leaves us with the familiar feeling of dread known to anyone who has spent too much time scrolling through social media feeds.

Attention span and the speed of new information should be carefully considered; otherwise, the recipient will miss the important aspects of the message.

The first of these notes reminded me of sitting in certain lecture classes and wondering just what in the world the professor was talking about. The second note reminded me of sitting for certain final exams and wondering why the professor had made the lecture so much simpler than the test. I think the two work together to make a statement about how we absorb information from the internet - it's either too much all at once, leaving us with that stupefying sensation I know from suffering a concussion, or it's so simple that you become an expert on a complicated matter after reading two tweets and a podcast synopsis. In other words, the internet balances the twin concerns of too much and too little like an overactive child jumping from one end of a see-saw to the other.

Interacting with someone - like a neighbor - forces us to explain ourselves, generally about things that we are used to having taken for granted. It also exposes us to the lifestyles of those who do not regularly live in our social circles.

In addition to my agreement with the note, I'll add a third thought - it forces a healthy self-examination. When we learn about new people, we have no choice but to expand our sense of possibility, and with this come certain questions - I made a choice between A and B, but would I have chosen differently if I had known about C? We also get a priceless opportunity to see what about us was merely propped up by past circumstance and what is truly at the core of our essence.

The story potentially presented to multiple yet unknown audiences is often stripped of its specific details, as what appeals to one audience may offend another. The modern social media star is at the intersection of all these points, where the content is engineered such that no one is ever offended, resulting in content that settles into a predictably lowest common denominator.

I wonder if this is at the root of the dissatisfaction with social media - it presents itself with the promise of free expression, yet the understood if not openly acknowledged premise is that most of what goes up on these platforms will be a highly filtered, "square peg in a round hole" representation of reality. I think there is a certain disorientation that results whenever we start living up to a watered-down version of our selves.

Break me in, teach us to cheat, and to lie, cover up, what shouldn't be shared. And the truth's unwinding, scraping away at my mind - please stop asking me to describe.

The scary thing about this time is the sense of perpetual acceleration created by the internet - if you go online and look long enough, you'll find whatever you need to confirm that things continue to get worse, as if the planet is hurtling faster and faster toward certain oblivion. What makes this worse is the understanding that although we live in the best-informed moment of human history, the only thing we've learned from the internet is that information alone is nowhere near enough to create meaningful progress. The worst thing of all is that even though we all know this, we still log on every day to gather even more of this useless information; the worst thing of all is that the root of our suffering is a self-inflicted malaise.

The next step is clear to me, which is...

...hold on...

...what? 

OK, I admit it, this note isn't from How To Do Nothing, it's from "Citizen Erased" by Muse. But this is a riff-off, so why not bring in the best? You know how these go.

Thanks for reading! More nonsense coming your way on Sunday.

proper corona admin, vol 102 - game night with dr. fauci

I've just reviewed the CDC's (newest) mask guidelines for the third time. I wanted to make sure I understood it, so I poured myself a cup of coffee and dug into the details. Here's the page if you want to see it, but I made a quick summary for anyone in a hurry - if you're vaccinated, you can stop wearing masks, except when you should, though you never should outside, assuming of course no other superseding local guidelines, but no worries because if you happen to be around someone who is sick there is no need to isolate, in fact you don't even need to get tested, which makes a lot of sense except that no vaccine is 100% effective... anyway, like, you know?

Luckily, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, clarified matters - "What we're really asking in those settings, is to say, in terms of the honor system, people have to be honest with themselves." So apparently, there is a - excuse me, the - honor system now? Where was the honor system for the last fourteen months? I think it would have made more sense if the CDC just told it like it is - America is going to play a COVID variant of Secret Hitler for the next few months. I have understood the instructions, right? There are two groups - a little over half on the vaccinated team while the rest lie about being vaccinated. What, you want to see my card? I'm sure this will go well.  

reading review - exhalation

I wrote about Chiang's first collection, Stories of Your Life, in February, and I could repeat much of what I said then for this review. Each of Chiang's stories have a strong core idea, a premise that finds "the intersection of science, society, and philosophy", and once again I found the collection to be something of a mixed bag. My only recommendation is the story "The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling", which had the ring of a disappointing sophomore album yet turned out to be my favorite work from the collection (1). In fact, I should clarify that there is nothing disappointing about Exhalation - these passed my most important criteria for short fiction, readability; I'm looking forward to his next book.

Exhalation by Ted Chiang (April 2021)

I don't have enough knowledge of science fiction to know this for certain, but I sense that Chiang's writing departs from the tradition of the genre whenever he explores the behavior rather than the environment of the imagined world. I think this is why his writing has appealed to so many readers. It may also explain why I found myself unmoved by many of his stories - the central idea is the catalyst not just for the story but within it, and unlike in other short fiction it's the premise rather than the characters that drive the growth of the protagonists. I'm reminded of something Paul Graham mentioned about paintings - all things equal, paintings with people in it are more interesting than paintings without, for the most interesting thing to people is other people. The crux of any story is a decision, which is another way of describing behavior; I wonder if, all things equal, a story about behavior driven by other people is more interesting than one driven by the premise.

The extent to which strong ideas drive the narratives is reflected in my book notes. There are some favorites - for example, that certain ideas have no danger until they are believed, or that in the long run purely intellectual rewards lose their appeal. I thought the observation that experience makes people more valuable than software was an especially important point in this time when many speculate about AI without knowing exactly what it will look like in daily life. The lesson that resonated with me was a definition for taking responsibility - it means acknowledging errors, then taking those into account while making the next decision.

TOA Rating: Three robots out of four.

Footnotes

1) I do make this joke with endearment, for any artist or author referenced in the quip.

1a) By the way, those interested in reading the short story can follow the links at the bottom of the story's Wikipedia entry. 

socialism is a joke

There's an old adage about comedy - you can say it if it's funny. What this means is that there are certain things you shouldn't say, but if you think you can pull it off then you're free to take the risk. A comedian in this sense is like a magician, deftly diverting our attention so that we see the humor without noticing the elephant in the room - why it shouldn't be said. This is hard work, which explains why watching comedy is rarely a smooth process - inevitably, the comedian slips, the joke splatters, and the audience cringes. A regular source of these reactions comes while watching those performances of yesteryear, where present-day viewers sit in uneasy silence in front of their screens while the laughter earned against the standards of a bygone era echo into all corners of the living room.

The funny thing I noticed about these mishaps is how frequently there is a kernel of humor in the joke. There's the one I heard about a condemned prisoner's last words - "warden, the electric chair isn't plugged in". If you tell this joke a certain way, you are guaranteed a good laugh. But what if I point out that when I first heard this joke, it was about a Polish guy, or a blond? What if it was about someone with a mental disorder? There is a point where a joke simply stops working, but I don't think it's necessarily accurate to say it's an issue with the humor - rather, it's about the audience's discomfort with someone becoming a victim of the joke, and how this discomfort makes it impossible to consider the humor. It's like being served an adult coffee that's been topped off with extra enthusiasm - no matter how much caffeine is in the drink, at some point the alcohol will bring you down.

The problem I have with this comedic style - beyond the offensiveness of certain jokes - is that it requires the audience to take on a disproportionate share of the risk. Think about the implicit agreement in comedy - if the performance is good, the audience will enjoy a few laughs while the comedian builds a reputation. This distribution of rewards suggests that the comedian, who stands to benefit the most from a good performance, should also take on the most risk, just as it should be in any risk-reward consideration. Broadly speaking, this is how comedy works most of the time - the performer and the audience work together toward a goal, then everyone has a share of the rewards. The balance of power shifts the moment a comedian makes a joke at someone's expense. If such a joke flops, the comedian is going to suffer a tiny bit - it's never a nice feeling to get a flat reaction from the audience - but it's possible someone in the crowd will leave with a humiliating memory of the night. On the other hand, if the joke goes well the comedian will earn a big laugh, but it's unlikely anyone put at-risk by the joke will muster more than a defeated chuckle. In this style of comedy, the performer wins big, or loses small; the victim loses big, or breathes a sigh of relief. I would hardly call this a fair allocation of risks given the distribution of potential rewards.

I suppose this is why Mitch Hedberg is my favorite comedian. He operated from a different playbook than his peers - he first separated what you couldn't say from what you could, then he said the funniest of the latter. I looked through this article ranking 275 of his jokes and got the sense that he never made his audience uncomfortable. The remarkable aspect of this observation is that it remains true by today's standards (1). Since he never bothered the elephant in the room, it meant that when his jokes tanked they tanked because they weren't funny at all. It's a subtle difference from when jokes flop because they aren't funny enough, but it makes all the difference. To put it another way, what Mitch Hedberg did was take that old adage - you can say it if it's funny - and elevate it to the next level - he said what was funny. He created something valuable out of nothing more than his mind, which differentiates him in a field that is too often defined by performers stepping on someone else's back to climb to new heights.

It may seem odd at first to waste all this energy just to make this minor distinction. Can't I just take a joke? But my standards have changed, such that I now feel the punch more than the punch line. We live in a system that is inherently incapable of separating creators from takers, but instead of facing the challenge we have clumsily equated the two. When I hear a committed capitalist defend unethical practices - it's profitable if it earns a profit - I realize that something about the original intent was lost in the execution. The simplistic view suggests that if an action brings in a greater return than expense, then the action is profitable, and the action is justified. Too often, however, the equation overlooks the breadth of expense and neglects those who, at the very least, should be made whole after the transaction. Too often, the equation overlooks the importance of everyone having a share of the rewards, for without the promise of shared rewards we become incapable of working together for common goals. The capitalist piles more onto the plate without making the necessary distinction - does the slice come from a shared allocation of a growing pie, or was it taken from a neighbor? All too often, the glittering profit distracts from the suffering left in its wake. We can do it if it's profitable, but for whom? It is a systemic joke told at our expense, and I sense fewer and fewer of us are laughing.

Footnotes

1) I got through the top 33 before I came across a joke that I could see being out of order (the premise is neglectful pet ownership). The next one worth mentioning, #57, makes a reference to gambling addiction, but... well, you can read it. I finished the top 100, and those were the two I thought might make an audience member uncomfortable.

proper corona admin, vol 101 - guesswork

It's been about two weeks since Massachusetts rolled back its outdoor mask mandate, and I would say that people have adopted a more relaxed approach to masks since the decision. It was not, however, the sort of light switch moment I'd expected - it wasn't like everyone suddenly put their masks into storage on April 30. It seems that on an average outdoor trip, the majority of the people I've passed in May have been wearing masks. I would also guess that more people are going to wear masks today than they did at this time last year. So, what's going on? I'm tempted to make a snarky comment - I guess we all follow the science, except when we make up our own - but the situation, as it has been all along, is more complicated, and not one that would benefit from the generalizations of my broad brushstrokes.

If I had to make a guess, I would suggest that the past year has changed us, making us more likely to persist with these masks throughout this tentatively hopeful month. We spent much of the last year making one aimless guess after another, inventing convoluted explanations about risk despite having almost no understanding of the virus. We are, in other words, D+ students, on track to graduate from COVID University by the slenderest margin, but we are battle-tested - we know that nothing is guaranteed except the uncertainty of the situation. Does the vaccine protect me? Can the vaccinated asymptomatically pass along the virus? Are my unmasked neighbors fully vaccinated, or partially, or not? We don't know much, but we do know this - it's not worth guessing anymore.

reading review - in the shadow of statues

This book turned out to be a little different from my initial expectation. It was not strictly about Mayor Landrieu's decision to take down Confederate monuments in New Orleans, but also covered his life and political career; the range is reflected in the variety within my book notes.

In the Shadow of Statues by Mitch Landrieu (June 2019)

In my mind the breadth of the work did not diminish In the Shadow of Statues, but I would understand if a reader was left wanting to hear more about the decision, particularly given the events of the two years since I read the book. Then again, what is there to learn about this that we couldn't figure out for ourselves? My perspective mirrors a point Landrieu makes about statues - they exist in part as the symbols we use to tell stories about our history. The Confederacy was built on "the great truth" that slavery was a natural condition, and statues hail their leaders as heroes. So what is the story being told by these statues? I am befuddled by those who claim this situation requires further contemplation; it requires bulldozers. It does not stretch my imagination to wonder what stories future generations will tell about our time, when these statues remained cherished landmarks in so many places some one hundred and sixty years - and counting - after the opening shots of the Civil War.

TOA Rating: Three statues out of four.

leftovers #2 - a room of one's own

I speculated at the end of my reading review that the unspecified masculine values might include wars, sports, and being a business bro. I think I'd like to take that last one back and replace it with a broader concept - stepping out of line. I'm not sure if I've necessarily come closer to listing "values" with my revised list, but it looks better to me.

reading review - how to do nothing

I mentioned a couple of years ago that a friend recommended I read Digital Minimalism, which came with the caveat that the book's idea of an "extreme" example was living without a smart phone - in other words, my life (1). This speaks to a broader idea - there are certain books that initially seem right down my alley, yet a blunt assessment of the subject matter suggests that, at the very least, I'm going to be hard to impress. It was with this unique arrogance that I opened How To Do Nothing, a book loosely organized around the idea of finding meaningful connection in a world increasingly distracted by the attention economy. 

How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell (March 2021)

It's important to note that living without a smartphone by no means precludes me from distraction. To revise a clumsy analogy from back in the summer, it's not adequate protection to keep the air conditioner going while the rest of the building is on fire. The bulk of the blame for the attention economy is perhaps rightfully aimed at the major social media companies, but I still find myself in the mess of distraction anytime I try to read an article online while scrolling past the endless ads, videos, and hyperlinks that surround, bisect, or pop-up into my field of vision; the experience of reading a newspaper online is comparable to having a librarian throw a pie in your face as you turn the pages of an overdue checkout.

I'll step back from my chaotic comparisons to highlight one of Odell's comments - the past few years have locked us into a near-permanent condition of anxiety, and it's this feeling that enables the success of social media. I have written on TOA that I see our current condition as a natural result of the internet, to which social media is only a small though crucial contributor. My broader concern is reflected in yet another of Odell's observations - our attention thrives on novelty, which means we can either willfully seek it out or leave to others the task of introducing it. The problematic aspect of the internet is the way we depend on it as a novelty machine, and over time us internet users become incapable of finding our own novelty in the unobtrusive nature of the real world.

The idea that has remained with me in the weeks after reading this book is how an erosion of attention eventually means we become unable to live up to a certain ideal for life, which I believe Odell summarized as "wanting what we want to want". This is a massively familiar feeling to me, but I could not articulate it until I saw it phrased in those exact words - there are the things that I want, and then there are the things that I want to want, and it's possible that some of the obstacles standing between the two are directly related to the way I use the internet. "What do I want?" is perhaps life's most daunting question, and I felt that way before considering the possibility that my lifestyle choices have hampered my ability to want what I want.

So, what do I want now? What do I want to want? I've read How To Do Nothing, and now I don't know what to do. My experience of living without a constant connection to the internet tempts me to wave away certain earnest calls to action. The situation is like trying to stay dry in the rain, which often requires a shift in mentality rather than concrete action; the reality is that some things about life must be accepted rather than changed. But maybe I have this wrong, my imagination dulled away by a pandemic year spent at the screen, leaving me incapable of envisioning a novel response to the question of the digital age. Modern technology is draining away certain qualities that we once considered invaluable, and if this happens to bother you then doing nothing isn't an option.

TOA Rating: Three smartphones out of four.

Footnotes

1) By the way, I did read Newport's book, and I intend to write about it at some point in 2021. This may surprise some readers - why read a book that seems to be about me? The flip side is, why not read such a book? Don't we all love to read about ourselves? Isn't that the most interesting kind of reading?

leftovers - a room of one's own

I left out a couple of thoughts last week in what surely was among the most nonsensical "reviews" in the history of written communication.

First, I want to emphasize my point that although little insights of the highest caliber are certainly scattered throughout this extended work, the ones I captured in my book notes merely reflect those that caught my reading eye in January. It's natural that what I notice will change over time due to the accumulation of experience, but I suspect most of my transformation will be informed by my writing efforts; it is hardly worth the trouble of writing if we are not the first to learn from the experience.

Some may wonder if reading can lead to a similar change. I don't rule out the possibility, but I think writing is better suited for the task. The difference is generation - a reader becomes familiar with the end result in a certain context while a writer understands the process of creating the same conclusion regardless of the surroundings. I came across an intriguing example when I looked at Le Monde's "100 Books of the Century" list after learning A Room of One's Own placed #69 in the rankings. I realized that of the top twenty books, eighteen were written by men. I think it's plausible I would have noticed this even had I not written those TOA posts I referenced in last week's review, but I know this caught my eye now because of my writing.

Speaking of that list, I know it's always a shaky process to read too much into survey results, but I wonder if it presents another angle to my point regarding the difference in reading and writing. Surely, the readers surveyed were at least familiar with A Room of One's Own, yet ignored its argument as it settled into the bottom half of the top 100. So what did they think made the book any good if they didn't apply its argument to their assessment of the work? The highest ranked book written by a female author, The Second Sex, finished #11. I have not read Simone de Beauvoir's work but I'm confident enough to repeat my point - if you think enough of the book to rank it #11, to rank it behind the work of ten men, then you should probably have understood its message to the extent that you'd have had no choice but to rank it higher.

reading clearout - may 2021

Hi reader,

A few thoughts today on some recent(ish) (re)reading that I won't put into a full review.

The Prophet by Khalil Gibran (January 2020)

I've written plenty on TOA about Gibran's 1923 classic, with my 2018 reading review being the comprehensive precursor to my 2019 blurb. My notes from last January include a remark that I reread "On Giving", though of course I obviously saw fit to reread the whole book. The thought that a wrongdoer speaks for the ills of the community as much as for the individual has stayed with me since I first read The Prophet, blessing me with a perspective regarding our structural issues that informed the way I responded to events of the past year.

Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli (April 2019)

It occurred to me as I reviewed my 2019 reading list that it has now been two full years since I last saw this book, which I've read six times since 2010. Unlike last year, however, I don't feel any sense of having missed my annual April rereading - it seems that the tradition was more closely tied to Marathon Monday than it was to the spring season. I guess the theory will soon be put to the test - the next edition of the race is rescheduled for October. In the meantime, we can carry on with one of the enduring lessons of the book - routines can provide just enough stability to guide us through our difficult times.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (December 2019)

This is one of those books that I should have written about right away because its combination of length, symbolism, and surreal elements make it a challenging work to review eighteen months after the fact. I only half-recommend Kafka on the Shore for I am unlikely to reread it again, but I do sense this is a partly unfair comment as I am comparing it against some of Murakami's other work, which I prefer; this book written by an otherwise unknown author might gain higher approval from me. The role of imagination in helping us move forward from the past is an important idea that drifts through this work, for our sense of responsibility is almost always an imaginative act; reclaiming responsibility for our own lives is the greatest imaginative act of all. Otherwise, we may be doomed once we pass life's point of no return, doomed to live out the remainder of our time trying to fit the broken shards back into the framework of the past.

the business bro hits carrots with sticks

My February post that mentioned a former boss and his bonus scheme begs an additional question - why do business bros insist on trotting out these incentive programs if they fall afoul of a simple cost-benefit consideration? It's an important question, and not just because it forces me to admit that despite my constant complaining business bros tend to be a sharp bunch. If the reward offered is so small that employees don't find it to be worth the effort, usually the business bro in charge is aware of the issue. In fact, I remember a few days after the end of the program that our company president mentioned to me in passing that the bonus payout "didn't look very impressive on a check". But surely, we didn't need to see a check to understand the problem. So what's going on here? Is there an underlying truth that carries more weight than my calculation from February?

I think the mental leap is that although the bonus program appears on the surface to be a soggy carrot, in most cases it's understood that such a reward is merely a sugar-coated stick. In other words, the half-edible incentive does less to motivate the team than does the implicit threat of punishment. This is true even when the business bro has good intentions for implementing the program - the response is likely more to do with steering clear of any unstated sanction. The reality is that everyone knows at some point the fact of participation in the program is going to be among the performance evaluation criteria. At minimum, those who've participated will benefit from some intangible rewards, possibly by being regarded as "reliable" or "hard working". The employees understand this, they suspect everything is eventually evaluated, which creates a real problem for anyone who has reservations about participating in the program - the bonus is presented as above and beyond the expectation, but at some point the boss might decide that those who work longer hours are the preferable employees. This looming performance evaluation mechanism, official or not, is the main reason why the decision to participate in the program is much more complex than the simple cost-benefit aspect I mentioned in the prior post.

The problem is magnified when the organization's performance assessment process is not directly linked to a measurable project or outcome, instead being framed in relative terms against a shifting subjective standard for "good standing". These environments subtly remind all staff that as soon as one lemming starts putting in long hours, the rest need to start sprinting for the cliffs lest they be left on the short end of the grading curve. This rat race feeling may be familiar to those who've competed in contexts outside of paid work - I suspect it's true in athletics, academics, social media, and much more; it's the law of nature wherever the standard is relative comparison. At the end of the year, it doesn't matter if the catalyst is a bonus program or not - the review cycle will identify the hardest workers, and the hardest workers will be those who seem to have worked the hardest; the measuring stick is the average work rate within the organization. The bonus program is merely one way to lift the average. The situation is only magnified if the bonus payments are public knowledge, or at least its details accessible to managers, as the numbers can tempt them into using those as shortcuts for performance evaluation.

It seems to me that incentive programs carry a serious risk of driving away anyone who can't afford to participate in it. This exodus may be driven by the "pay cut" factor described last month where the top performers leave to seek wages in line with their abilities, but it would also include employees whose other obligations or interests precluded them from devoting additional time to work. At some point these employees will realize their inability to offer extended time commitments to their work is costing them opportunities, and they will find an organization where the fact of their own lives is not a built-in detriment to their career.

Is this the mechanism that explains pay gaps? I'll stop short of jumping to conclusions but I do think this is an important factor. If I had to answer this question for a given organization, I would ask two questions. First, are existing pay gaps explainable by the ability to work more than forty hours per week? Second, does each staff member have the same constraints when it comes to the first question? I suspect that as I asked these questions while moving up through the levels in the organization, I would find an increasing proportion of those who've simply had more opportunities than their peers. My assumption is that the most common explanation for the fact will make some reference to individual decisions without taking into account how those decisions were influenced by access to certain resources necessary for taking advantage of those opportunities. If my hunch were true there would be far more to say about this fact, but for today I'll simply point out that such an organization would likely favor quantity over quality as it relates to performance, both in terms of measuring individuals as well as their objectives in the hiring process. I'm not sure about you, but I'd much rather prefer to work for someone who worked well rather than worked often, and for an organization who sought this quality in its new hires.

All of this nonsense brings me to my last thought, which is that from my experience there are very few true instances of a carrot or a stick. Or, perhaps a better way to say it is that the best reward is avoiding the punishment. My informal rule of thumb is that if someone offers a pure carrot - in the sense of a reward that can be pursued with no downside - then it's my job to find the hidden stick (and vice-versa). I've heard that in organizations which offer a bonus program, most employees eventually assume the bonus as part of their regular compensation. This is almost always explained with the air of "those silly employees and their careless assumptions" but the reality is that the bonus is surely described as performance based, which means the decision to pursue the bonus is just as much tied to performance as every other aspect of the job. The employees assume that the fact of pursuing the bonus is enough to earn the bonus, so why wouldn't they count those dollars? They know that if for some reason they don't earn the bonus, it likely means they are already on their way to being sacked, so perhaps the better way to describe the situation is that "employees assume if they are still employed, they'll get the bonus". They know the truth - if you aren't being hit with it, it's easy enough to enjoy the carrot.

the toa newsletter, may 2021

I sensed throughout the week that I was going to have a hard time with this one, and when I woke up yesterday I realized I was right - nothing happened in April, so I had nothing for the newsletter. We are now all a year into this pandemic, and I think we understand what I mean when I speak of this feeling - weeks and weeks can go by without a single noteworthy event. I spent the morning dealing with various admin - including but not limited to The Big Admin, aka taxes - while in the back of my mind I considered various options for this post. I went out for a run in the early afternoon to think it over and finalize my topic.

It was one of those spring days that earns a majority of its rave reviews from behind closed windows - bright, sunny, and almost warm, but far too windy, the equivalent of watching the movie instead of reading the book (though not in the sense of Nomadland, I suppose). Still, April 30 will go down as a small local milestone in the battle against COVID-19: today was the first day of the commonwealth's relaxed mask measures for outdoor settings. I went through my five minute stretching and warm-up routine, then I walked to the northbound side of the Longfellow Bridge and started my run. After a few strides, I glanced around to see if the coast was clear, then I grabbed my mask and pulled...

I know this is the point where I'm supposed to wax poetic about The Great Mask Liberation of 2021. Oh, the freedom! Ohhh, the sunshine on my face!! Ohhhhh, the clean air filling my lungs, like water rushing across parched farmland!!! Surely I burst into tears as I thought about the last thirteen months? TOA readers will know better. Instead, I'm here to share the one observation from my run where, for the most part, I kept my mask down - everyone was still wearing a mask. This isn't a comment about other people. My point is that up until yesterday the only thing I noticed was the exact opposite. How much of my perspective is tinted by the shaded lens of tribalism? As always, I am humbled by these gentle reminders of the limits to self-awareness.

Thanks for reading. See you in May, here or in person!