Good morning. Hello. How are you? #405
Beachy Head, Casket Girls, big hair, Jane birthday, FICO funniness, American individualism garden disasters, and the political activism behind turkey slice thickness.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? What is UP. Doing okay? We’re making it through this week. We’re gonna make it. Things are gonna change I can feel it (said in the George Bush voice sampled in Beck’s debut single, “Loser.” Wait. Was that Bush? I’ve always assumed it was Bush.) I am listening to the new self-titled album by Beachy Head, which is a super group of Christian and Rachel from Slowdive, the drummer from the Flaming Lips, and the dude from Casket Girls but not, sadly, the Casket Girls themselves, which is a shame because they really are, like, the coolest band around.
The album is solid. Sounds like Slowdive more than anything else. Recommended. Plus the vinyl is a really nice translucent aqua.
Programming note: Thank you, Alice, for reminding me that it was Skyward Inn, a book that she’d recently read and didn’t quite recommend, but thought it was interesting. I think I might read it after I finish re-reading the Three Body Problem books. I am in book two now, toward the end.
I washed my hair last night and didn’t brush it or put product in it or put it up and it looks gloriously insane. I might even put a picture of it on instagram today. If I can get Jane to be cute and have messy hair too.
Today is Jane’s three year, seven month birthday. Gotta remember to write her her monthly letter for the Jane book today. I was late last month, how embarrassing. Every month I write to her on her birthday. Should make a nice little book for her, limited edition of one, when she’s older. That’s the idea, anyway.
Oh this is fun I got one of these emails saying my credit score had changed, and here is my credit history, well, not the credit history but… let’s call it the change log:
This is essentially a record of me using, and then paying down, my credit card each month. I pretty much put everything on the card, like you do, for the points, and then I pay the entire thing off each month. But apparently that exact amount of credit usage is enough to cause my credit to drop by a couple points, every month, and then go back up by a commensurate couple of points, every month. This does not, it must be said, inspire a whole lot of confidence in America’s credit rating companies.
There was this Op-Ed in the New York Times yesterday that is causing me a lot of consternation. Oh but they don’t call them Op-Eds now. Fuck I can’t remember what they call them now. Anyway, it was about how American individualism is a good thing. The article was a summary of new research, and like many of these articles it couldn’t decide just how much faith to put in the research. The headline of the article was “Everyone Thinks Americans Are Selfish. They’re Wrong,” which sounds pretty absolute. But then, you know, it was a summary of a study that involved mainly statistical analysis and surveys, and the article was written by one of the researchers, so of course they couch their language a bit more in the article, saying:
But new research suggests [emphasis added] the opposite: When comparing countries, my colleagues and I found that greater levels of individualism were linked to more generosity — not less — as we detail in a forthcoming article in the journal Psychological Science.
And so at first I thought, “well, then, that’s just the headline writer being hyperbolic. Like they do. But, nah. While they do acknowledge a few ways the study could be wrong, they decide to double-down in the closer:
America has many problems, including political polarization, plummeting trust in institutions and economic inequality — some of which result from true selfishness on the part of citizens and government leaders. But none of these problems is a result of our individualism.
This whole thing was interesting to me, because I am definitely one of those people who believe America is waaaaay too individualistic, comically so, to our detriment. And in reading this article, at first, all I did was look for problems and inconsistencies in the study methodology. And it was no problem to find a bunch of them. Enough that I could, like I think we all usually do, just ignore the whole study because it doesn’t jibe with my worldview.
But I knew that was wrong, and I should try and be a good person or something and incorporate this data into my worldview. I don’t really believe that, because it’s just one study, and I believe that often it is perfectly rational to ignore a single study until there are more studies and something like a scientific consensus starts to form. I think we as a society spend waaaaaay too much time bickering about individual studies that never get verified. But this study didn’t seem insane, and there definitely seemed like there might be a grain of truth to it.
Because after all, there’s a contradiction within me, within all of us, about individualism. If you are anti-individualist, or even leaning that way, in our society, you’re a bit of a contrarian, a bit of a maverick and, thus, a bit individualist. And I certainly can’t deny I personally love my individuality and don’t want to be absorbed into some sort of Borg collective. It’s a balance, it’s a spectrum. And in some ways, this article challenged my leanings.
But eventually I figured out its fatal flaw: it measured the correlation between altuism and indivudualism, finding that individualistic countries such as the US were more altruistic. But that’s all it measured. There are plenty of other traits that make up a character. And we’ve always known that Americans are among the most charitable people in the world in terms of charitable giving, adjusted for income and per capita. But of course there are plenty of things it didn’t measure: bipolarity, malevolence, jealousy, happiness, kindness, Machiavelliansm.
In the end, I think this study suffers from what I call the Salt-and-Pepper Fallacy: the belief that two things are true opposites, when in fact they’re not at all. Altruism and Selfishness are not, I suspect, opposites. It’s as simple as that. And for proof I suspect most of us only need to look inward. I certainly know that every ounce of my altruism is not mitigated by my selfishness, and it does not mitigate my selfishness. They co-exist within me, and I suspect within us all.
In any case, I’m glad I didn’t just close the browser window in disgust and mutter to myself “dumb study, I don’t believe it,” like I totally wanted to. It is so hard to read things that disagree with your worldview. It never gets easier, does it.
So we have had a garden disaster. Some squirrel or rabbit has eaten my peas completely. Like in the span of, like, say, 6 hours. And I had just sprayed them with the squirrel repellant. They’re just.. gone. The entire foot-plus-long stems just… gone. Down to little nubs in the dirt. It is so depressing. Gardening is hard enough without these stupid critters eating everything. In the immortal words of Joe Biden, c’mon man.
Then, on top of that, I had one of those pots where you have to remember to drill holes in the bottom yourself before you plant something in it, and I… did not remember to drill holes in the bottom. This was two weeks ago, but unbeknownst to me, the poor plant was slowly drowning in the water I had been giving it. Plus it was accumulating so much weight it eventually caused the little flimsy white flip table it was sitting on to collapse, spilling the pot and all of its muddy dirt all over the porch. I fixed it, which involved putting the pot up high, and drilling the holes into it while it still had muddy dirt in it, which is a quite gross thing to do, plus you gotta pull the drill away quickly enough to — oh shit I think I left the drill outside I’ll be right back. Whew. Okay. Drill is fine and safe and sound back inside. Good thing that it didn’t rain. Not that it’s rained in, like, more than a week. Anyway, it was a messy mess. But I think I saved the plant, which is good, because this Thai Basil is one I got at Walmart, not one I grew from seed, and I quite like this variety and it’s the only plant I have of it, and I haven’t had the chance to take cuttings and grow them in water and rooting compound yet. Fingers crossed.
So, yeah. Gardening setbacks. Not super psyched about that. And yes, those pots are too small for peas. It was an experiment. And it was working! Bastards.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Turkey slice thickness. Are you a deli-goer at your grocery store? Have you noticed how absolutely obsessed people are with the thickness of their deli slices? The good grocery stores have just accepted this, and go to elaborate lengths to accommodate people’s very important opinions about the thickness of their deli meats. But when I order delivery, there is no dropdown for thickness. Like, yes, I could add a note, but adding a note just feels… insane. Because I do not self-identify as a person obsessed with their deli slice thickness (says the guy writing a mini-essay about their deli slice thickness). I don’t want to be that kind of American consumer. But I also, you know, what my deli slices cut at the exact thickness that comes from setting the thickness dial on the slicer to between 3 and 4. But when I’m at the deli counter, I try and act, you know, chill about this. Like, hey man, if you could do those slices somewhere three or fourish that’d be cool but if not NBD because I am a cool guy, I am chill.
Except now I am getting delivery, and the little “notes” column is putting lie to my self-delusion. Because if I want my turkey slices to be cut between the 3 and 4, I have to PUT IT IN THE BLANK FIELD, and chill guys do not put it into the blank field. That’s for neurotic people. So then I just leave it up to fate, and I get my slices whatever the hell thickness the deli person feels like cutting them today. And, you know, maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I can’t help but feel like the deli workers are really LOVING this. Freedom! While I suspect I’m alone in writing this down, I suspect I’m not alone in being someone who gives them thickness instructions in person, but not on the online form. I bet they LOVE the online orders. They are set free. They can go wild. My turkey slice thicknesses have been all over the place during the pandemic. Positively chaotic. These people are indulging.
Good for them, I say. Accepting my incorrect turkey thickness is, now, a political act. I will silently suffer at my too thick or too thin slices in solidarity with these workers. I am such a good person.
OK well I did get a shoegaze mix done yesterday — thank you, Beachy Head. So let’s enjoy that today. Has an Anita Lane/Blixa Bargeld jam on it that, in listening to it recently, I realized really is pretty shoegazy. And a Miranda Sex Garden song from their raaawk phase. God, that tour was so good. I still think about it all the time. Great backing band featuring members of the Mary Chain and Spiritualized. And Katharine Blake is just a force of nature. Oh ha this also has that American Football song with Rachel Goswell on it, so I guess she’s on here twice, and neither time with the band we know her better for, those ultimate shoegazers Slowdive. That is a coincidence. But i do love how prolific she’s been these last few years. Minor Victories, Beachy Head, American Football, she is busy. It’s a nice change from those years where we got just one album in, like, a decade.
All right! Let’s go do Wednesday! Three meetings today that’s not too bad. May you be limited to three meetings today.
i have a theory that americans are more generous because they have to be: our social services are so shitty, so there's just more NEED. if people were better taken care of in general (funding for healthcare, education, the arts, etc.), we wouldn't need as much charity. so put that in your pipe and smoke it, study.
They are called "guest essays" now :| After The Times decided (understandably) that I should not be building a standalone travel app (see: Covid) I was put on a project as the Product Lead to "reimagine the op-ed" in celebration of its 50th anniversary (not really though). I will happily tell you all about it :)