Good morning. Hello. How are you? #803
Clicking loves company. California rains. text your friends. Against Mars. Charging EVs in Fairbanks.
Good morning! Hello, there. How are you, fellow clickers? Man, that was a hugely reassuring discovery. Really brought out the best in GMHHAY. Kinda like back in the day when Facebook was kind and useful. Just great. So many people click in their heels! We should start a global advocacy organization. I can just see the late-night ads brought to you by the Ad Council. I have contacts there, I’ll get in touch. At least, I did a decade ago. But seriously, that was very reassauring. I am not alone. Of course, no one has any idea what to do about it, but that’s okay. Misery loves company, and, honestly, it’s not that miserable. My clicking is not accompanied by pain or instability, just a vague sense of embarrassment because I have a vivid childhood memory of it happening to my mom and me thinking “oh wow, she’s old” and now I’m convinced Jane is thinking the same thing. Though weirldy it doesn’t happen when Jane is with me on the stairs, either because I’m carrying her, or we’re going very slow. Jane is not a stair runner.
Speaking of Jane, check out yesterday’s drawing, it really is amazing. Note how the middle kitty is winking:
One of Jane’s baby friends — one of the babies that was born out of our same pre-natal class group — just lost her first tooth. So I guess that is coming soon. I mean, makes sense. I guess I knew this. In my head we had another couple years, but I guess not. Emma mentioned this yesterday morning while Jane was drawing that drawing, and we were like “welp. I guess we gotta prep her.” So in our super-sensitive, highly expert parenting style, one of us just said “hey Jane you’re gonna lose all your teeth soon and get new ones. So let us know if one of your teeth feels loose or funny.” She did not seem to care one way or another. I wonder if she processed it. She was pretty immersed in her drawing.
No tooth fairy for us. Probably some sort of gifting game. Still working that out. Guess we better figure it out soon.
We also spent a lot of time at breakfast yesterday talking about Standardization. She is very curious about standardization. People cannot be standardized. But temperature can. And time. Because if time wasn’t standardized, there would be chaos. I took the opportunity to bring forth pleasant memories of Thomas Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon and the 1752 conversion of England to the Gregorian calendar and the resulting "missing" eleven days. At least, what I could remember of it. I kinda wanna re-read that novel but it was so long. I am too old.
How are you Californians holding up? The rains seem insane. Biblical. Like something out of that early Nick Cave novel. I had a call with a Californian yesterday and talked to a couple friends and they all said it was pretty crazy. It perhaps does not help me in my fear for California that I started Octavia Butler’s climate-dystopia novel The Parable of the Sower yesterday. Bit hard to separate reality and fiction at the moment. I’m trying not to feel too smug about the climate security of my home and state, because of course no place is really safe, and we’ve narrowly missed like four hurricanes since we moved here, even though we’re well over an hour in land. But I gotta say, the west coast seems scary to me these days. Ring of fire and whatnot and fires and rains and droughts and my god it’s just so much. It sounds exhausting. And yet. The California dream also still feels real in me sometimes. It is a conundrum! I hope you guys are holding up okay.
Okay, two essays and a question for you guys today and we will begone. Keep it a little short today:
First, I recommend this beautiful, evocative essay by Damon Krukoswki paying tribute to his old friend, the poet Charles Simic. There is a part toward the end where, in the era before cell phones, there is a mix-up in scheduling and Damon and his wife Naomi end up accidentally ghosting Charles and his wife for a drink at the Ritz in Boston and their relationship never truly recovers, and man, that feeling. A slight offense — one you may not even know about — and a friendship changes for good. Friendships are so delicate. We take them for granted so often. Drop a friend a line. Drop a line to a friend.
Next: Manu Saadia, my fellow Trekkian Economist, author of the other book about Star Trek economics, and the author of the foreword of my book about Star Trek Economics, has a new cause. He is advocating against humans ever colonizing Mars, colonizing space at all. It is a… what do miquetoast critics say… provacative theory, but a compelling one in a lot of ways. He is writing a book and a newsletter about it, and yesterday he wrote an essay that lays out, in short, his central thesis. And I gotta say, it has a lot of merit:
The big idea: Because it can neither be owned not operated by anything or anyone, Earth’s biosphere gives us the material and physical possibility of freedom. Before it is a political right, freedom is an ecological phenomenon. Life in space inside constructed, mechanical replicas of Earth’s environment is the deliberate negation of that freedom.
The nerd space fanboy in me can find some ways to push back, but in an era with dudebro Elon being in the solo lead for this endeavor, it’s not hard to muster up some profound doubts about the whole situation. Woth keeping an eye on as Manu continues his work.
Also, I am a sucker for a new personal project.
And, finally, I leave with a question for my Alaskan readers. Or, I guess, specifically, my Fairbanksan and central/northern Alaskan readers: You know how we have those 110v outlets all over parking lots for people to plug their cars in? Well, first, I guess: do those still exist? Or has a combination of climate change and increasing capitalist kleptomania made it so malls and stores no longer offer free electricity to plug your cars in? And if they do still offer free 110v, do you ever see EVs charging from those? I mean, a) I know EVs are still pretty rare in Fairbanks owing to the reduced battery performance in cold weather, and b) charging from a 110v is hella slow, and c) I’m not even sure that stores keep the outlets powered in the summer, although on the other hand, why not if no one is using them? But all that being said… is it a practice you have seen at all? I am curious.
All right a goth mix for you. Did I just do one of these, like two weeks ago? Yes, yes I did. But I’m just in that kind of mood, what can I tell you.
A short one for you today. Thank you, friends. I hope you are holding up in these trying times.