Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1081
Talking to electricians, sleeping too much, the NYT gay Taylor op-ed, the complexity of modern buildings, fractal curiosity, making a bed with no sheets
Hey there, champ. How’s tricks? I am good. Yesterday after I wrote to you and completed my other morning rituals, I thought to myself “huh. I am very tired. It is 9 AM. I don’t have a meeting till 11. I’m gonna go sleep for an hour.” And then I went to bed and after warming up the bed got so, so cozy and ended up sleeping for three more hours, thus screwing up my entire day, wherein I had to rush to complete each and every thing. But man. That sleep. It ruled. It was so warm in that bed. It was the first time I hadn’t been cold in days. It felt so good. Being warm is great. I am so over this cold, this cold that seeps through my warm socks and sweaters and I feel down to my bones. I can understand why my mother-in-law has a sauna in that house across the driveway. I want a sauna. A sauna with an Ethernet connection do they have such things? Man.
Emma was off with a friend and after I woke up again, around noon, I told her what I had done. She asked if I was sick. “No,” I said. “Just tired, so tired, and cold, so cold. But I feel fine.”
She rightfully pointed out that sounded like someone who’s sick.
Mind you, I’d already gotten eight hours sleep the night before, and the night before that. And last night I got another eight and a half, and you know what? Around 5:45 AM this morning I was laying in my (so warm, so toasty) bed, and I thought “okay I think I have had enough sleep.”
And it was true! I feel fully rested for the first time in weeks. It is lovely.
I do not, however, feel warm.
You know, I gotta say, if a gay woman wants to write a 5,000 academic piece on Taylor Swift and gayness, outlining how Taylor Swift loves her easter eggs as a method of communicating with her fans, and how conveniently many, many, of those easter eggs are about gayness, and what does this mean for gay culture and is she gay but not just that, how are we, the gay community, supposed to interpret this, and here is a bunch of context and whatnot, well, I mean, who am I to judge? Taylor Swift does put a bajillion easter eggs in her songs, she has explicitly said she encourages the interpretation and discussion of them by her fans, she is putting queer easter eggs in her shit left and right, and now when people are doing exactly what she said they should do with those easter eggs, she is upset about it? Seems weird.
And as op-eds in the NY Times go, this one was pretty milquetoast.
I gotta wonder: has the Times ever done a methodical survey of the brand damage that its op-eds have done to it? Hating the Times is de rigeur these days, everyone’s pissed about something that the Times has said. But I suspect at least (at least!) 50% of that ire is directed at op-eds. And I suspect that 90% of the people feeling ire at the Times about something that was in an op-ed don’t even realize the distinction between journalism and op-eds. I mean, that’s widespread these days, right? Because we have places like Fox that barely distinguish?
I feel like the Times would be better off just killing off their entire op-ed department. The US no longer posesses the media literacy to distinguish. It’s more hassle than it’s worth.
Unless, you know, you’re addicted to the clicks that op-eds create. But the Times would never succumb to that, right? Gosh. I do declare.
When we came downstairs yesterday morning, Jane did not immediately run over and turn on the Christmas tree, so it was now officially time to take down the Christmas decorations. I am sad about that. I like leaving them up till March or so, maybe April (Taylor singing about leaving the tree up til January like it was some transgressive thing really is a telling bit I feel, especially since February would have been an easy equal replacement, and April would have fit the meter better and driven the point home to boot). The Olivia Rodrigo “I <3 your guts” Pink sparkly ornament only just arrived last week, too. It did not get enough time on the tree. It’s all such a shame.
Yesterday I was talking to the electrician and working out how to install the pendant grow lights in the greenhouse while maintaining the curtain situation. I had a pretty clear idea of how to do it, and I kept trying to explain my idea, but Don wasn’t getting it. He kept talking about these more complex conduit runs, and you could tell that even in his suggestion he hadn’t fully thought it through yet and it wasn’t gonna work. I wasn’t 100% confident in my approach, because I wasn’t sure the weight a suspended conduit would bear. I knew he had this information, and I kept trying to get him to get there so he could either bless my idea or shoot it down based on his increased technical knowledge. But I just couldn’t get him there.
But then, on his own, after about five minutes, he alight upon the same idea that I had, and got really into it, and reassured me that the conduit would support the pendants and we eventually resolved it.
And it was very clear to me that all of my effort had absolutely nothing to do with the pace at which he was going to arrive at that conclusion. He had to get there in his own time.
On top of all this, before leaving for Somerville I had left him a detailed note laying out this exact approach, including a link to some photos where someone else had done it this way.
And, you know, afterward, I was asking myself what I could have done to speed this up. And eventually I came to the conclusion that the answer was nothing — there was nothing else I could have done to speed this up. And it wasn’t a matter of intellect, it was a matter of time spent thinking about the problem. Because I’ve been thinking about this problem for months, and he’d only been thinking about it for about five minutes. I had made an effort to get him to think about it earlier, but of course like a normal person, he took my sheet, saw it full of links and dense writing and thought “yeah, I’ll deal with this later.” Because the dude was probably on another job, with its own challenges and quirks.
And this whole thing is really a management metaphor, isn’t it? Brain transfer, knowledge transfer, is so hard. Everyone groks things at their own speed and in their own way and there’s only so much you can do to speed that and encourage it, and it’s multiplied in complexity for every additional person you need to get up to speed. And there’s only so much you can do!
I don’t know where I’m going with this but man, humans. Communication. It’s so infinitely impossible.
Was meandering through the school line this morning in the near dark (rain’s a comin, clouds are thick) and it I started thinking about the infinite complexity of a modern building. The foundations, the electric, HVAC, uniform code, water and moisture mitigation, accessibility, health, lighting, maintaining peak functionality for decades against all four seasons and every weather event, energy efficiency, environmental impact, it’s just endless. Hundreds of trades, thousands of scientists working on every aspect.
Human knowledge is fractal. So many people look further afield, further away, when there is an infinite world of knowledge and learning and discovery and wonder right in front of them.
Yoda was right, man.
Lights doobie.
Sheeeeeiiiiiit, maaaan.
Emma tells me that a reasonable thing to do when you are leaving an AirBNB or maintaining one is to take the sheets off the bed (which our recent houseguests did), leave ‘em in the laundry room (which they did) and then remake the bed with no sheets on it (which our houseguests did as well). Don’t get me wrong, I’m 100% fine that they did this, but it struck me as weird. But then Emma told me this is what she does when she does post-visit cleaning. And I’m like really? People do this? So I was an idiot washing the sheets and putting them back on the bed? Emma rightly points out that we don’t know when our next guests are coming, and I might take a nap or something and we might forget whether the sheets were actually used or not, and she’ll probably end up washing them again anyway and, my god, I never realized any of this.
A whole world right in front of you.
Today’s Media of the Day is Northern Exposure, which is finally available on streaming. It’s on Amazon Prime, which sucks cuz they suck because they retroactively raised their rates on everyone who had Prime, but at least it’s out there. I am excited. I have yet to rewatch, but for obvious reasons this show held a dear place in my heart “back in the day.” Being an Alaskan radio disc jockey and all.
It will be interesting to see if it holds up.
Okay good chat thanks for that it’s helped a lot I owe you.
1. that line in Lover bothers me to NO END. most people leave their christmas stuff up until january. thank you for airing it publicly. i feel seen.
2. i’m ecstatic about Northern Exposure being available to stream. Sex and the City sort of ruined John Corbett for me and And Just Like That further did so. i need NE to put everything back to the way it once was. also Rob Morrow and Janine Turner...swoon
Sorta, as to this astute story, “Yesterday I was talking to the electrician and working out how to install the pendant grow lights in the greenhouse while maintaining the curtain situation. I had a pretty clear idea of how to do it, and I kept trying to explain my idea, but Don wasn’t getting it...” Not only is this a lesson in understanding communication as a manager, but a recognition of the complexity of the ‘trades’. Have you read “Shop Class as Soul Craft”? It’s a celebration of working with your hands AND the sophistication involved with trade work. By a University of Chicago PHD who left a leadership role in a research firm to open a motorcycle repair shop. Absolutely brilliant!
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/shop-class-as-soulcraft-an-inquiry-into-the-value-of-work_matthew-b-crawford/246465/item/4594767/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=pmax_high_vol_frontlist_under_%2410&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA-vOsBhAAEiwAIWR0TZ25obaIN6lTXIAaXfF0qdZAqRcrqCHhjFXTDw9yJQHdu3hXg-VtmRoC-3IQAvD_BwE#isbn=1594202230&idiq=4594767