Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1156
The Haidt brouhaha, A prayer for those who die online, managing depression, Meta-Taylor, Hunterbroo, Vinfast and the Election
Good morning, hello, your humble scribe, faithful servant Rick here. Sorry I’m late. Had to talk to Manuel the painter about painting the Serenity Walk, which is the wooden bridge-through-the-woods that leads to the pediatric speech therapist clinic in the basement of Chore House. Man, have you seen the Serenity Walk? It is so awesome. Makes me feel even more like Professor X and his mansion of gifted kids. Or at least Professor X’s landlord.
Plus I had to rant on the internet about another half-baked takedown of Jonathan Haidt’s book, accusing the book of being half-baked. I don’t even know this guy, clearly the left hates him, so I should too, and I suppose maybe I would if i met him or something, but I am here to tell you, as a thirty-year expert in the field: The internet fucking hurts people, and it hurts kids. Any person who tells you “the data does not support it” is incorrect.
Wish I downloaded Tumblr's T&S Zendesk queue when I oversaw it in its heyday. I could hand it over and say "here's your fuckin data."
To me this is very analogous to the chemical industry: We have, historically, allowed the chemical industry to pretty much make whatever crazy-ass chemical they want and sell it and market it. And if it turns out, fifty years later, they invented PFOAs or DDT or something, well, we'll get around to fixing it eventually. And we do. The entire cycle is about fifty years, and several people (sometimes thousands!) die from it in the process. Yet this is how society operates. Many people think we should, you know, make the chemical companies prove, decisively, over decades, that their chemicals are safe before we put em out in the world. But for a variety of reasons: moral, practical, capitalist, we do not do that. But we know our current approach is hella risky and common sense tells us that it’s probably bad to pour chemicals into our bodies and planets.1
Internet is 100% the same. Decades have gone by, we gave it a presumption of harmlessness. We didn't tax it, we didn't regulate it, we went on and on about how we didn't want to kill it too early. And now now for many of us old-timers, this is a learned habit. So it's almost impossible for early-generation internet denizens to realize a) that approach may have been then wrong one, and b) it's not a delicate flower anymore and the time has come to treat it like PFOAs.
Anyway. I am ready now. Sitting here ready to write while counting the minutes till ten-thirty when I can take five more Advil. Maybe six.
Thank you to my wife Emma for handling Jane this morning as I packed lunch and did breakfast while I got to sleep twenty-four extra minutes. I would say it was amazing, but, you know, twenty-four minutes. Still brutally early. But what was amazing was not having to deal with Jane’s absolute crankiness waking up. I mean, I do not blame her! Waking up at 6:45 sucks! I’m cranky too! But man, can’t we all just get along?
It’s weird to get pissed about your life and then think about your dead friends. I have been pretty sad the last few days. Last night I was laying on the couch, in pain in my foot, my elbow, my bicept, my head, my neck. Exhausted from a not even that hard day. And I was thinking about my friends Andy and Mike, because my friend Nick wrote an amazing piece for them yesterday:
And Nick and I were talking about it yesterday morning, and talking about how rough that period was, multiple Zoom wakes. And we were both doing a bit of old-man bitching about our achy joints or something, and I had a little epiphany in text and wrote:
It is weird to get totally pissed about your life then think about your dead friends
Like oh yeah I rather have this. But it weirdly doesn’t especially comfort you.
And so last night, watching a really-very-funny episode of Resident Alien full of some top-quality dumb jokes, I was feeling that hard. For the first time, I tried to just sort of sit in my body and think both at the same time. Not “why are you so sad?” because that question is a fool’s errand, surprise, depression doesn’t need a reason (boy meta-Taylor’s gonna be surprised someday when that out). Rather, I just lay there thinking “would you rather be Mike? Or Andy?” and I’m like “hell no! I like living! Living fucking rocks!” Then I’m like “okay, well, isn’t it dumb to be moping around about your elbow pain when life is finite and you love living it? Fucking live it!” and then I’m like “You are so right, Rick A, but I, Rick B do not have any freakin’ idea how to do that.” Ad infinitim. I had the thoughts that are supposed to cheer me up. They intellectually were very convincing. I just didn’t feel them.
(Also: what a great term! Meta-Taylor! Not the real Taylor, but the Taylor solely manifested in her songs! Assume they are not the same person.)
Completely separate from that (Lol yeah right) on Sunday it hit me when I was in the bathroom looking at my teeth: oh shit, I’m one of those moody depressed guys who needs to figure their shit out! Hi! It’s me! I’m the problem! I’m not some high-functioning good husband, good dad, I’m just another broken dude who doesn’t go to therapy and I really owe it to this family to do that!
So I guess Talkspace here I come! Even though I’m fine! Im fine! But life is finite and I want to be more than fine while I can.
There is this fascinating new news-slash-stock-trading site called Hunterbrook. Matt Levine is kind of obsessed with it, thinking through all the edge cases involved in trying to blend journalism and activist investing. Journalists can seek, get, and act on (i.e. report) inside information. Activist investors cannot, for example. It’s all very academically fascinating.
Less academically fascinating, though, and more immediately so, for me, anyway, is Hunterbrook’s newest analysis, into the Vietnamese car manufacturer Vinfast. The entire company makes terrible cars, seems to be a Ptomkin Village, 90% of its sales go to other companies in the same conglomerate, most just sit on empty lots, in Vietnam and America, untouched.
This is immediately relevant to me — and, really, to everyone — because Vinfast scored one of those sweet development deals to build it’s American factory right here in Chatham County, NC. And it is a clusterfuck. The cars are garbage, they’re not selling, there is almost no work being done on the factory.
To say this is relevant to everyone may be a stretch, but boy, if you see the Chatham Chatlist and Facebook commentary on this debacle — all Roy Cooper’s fault, all the Democrats’ fault. Of course Trump’s debacle of a similar nature dwarfs it by 2x or more, but never mind that. It was Roy Cooper who enabled eminent domain that took a bunch of farms (resist urge to put farms in quotes) to build this thing.
And I cannot convey to you how close the red-blue vote is in this upcoming election. Cooper is the Democratic governor, sitting atop a Republican super-majority legislature. This could literally decide the state! And the state could literally decide the union! Gah.
Gah I say!
I would like to end by saying that Jane did, in fact, keep her promise and did not bug me and Emma too much yesterday during her sick day. Also Emma mentioned this stomach thing has been going on a while, so it probably wasn’t made up. The graphomaniacal elderly department would like to issue an apology.
Media of the Day: Listening to a Western Ma band called Hidden Skyline, which includes my friend Miranda on guitar. Lovely country vibes. A+ recommend if you like the Sunvolt-inspired-but-more-melodic alt country.
Thank you to Chris Papasadero for this last line, as I wrote those two grafs as a rant in WITI slack right now. I am writing two things at once, this is confusing.