Entry 787: Thanksgiving Audible

S is out of the country for work again, so I'm on my own with the kids for the week. It's fine, but it's hard to keep their screen time down to a reasonable level. They both have access to so many devices, and I can't be on them constantly about it. Well, I can, but it would be a constant fight, and I wouldn't get anything done I need or want to get done. We all know a big appeal of screen time is that it's easier on the parents. Also, the weather has been terrible, even considering it's the end of November -- some combination of cold, blustery, and rainy -- so I can't send Lil' S2 outside, which is one of my go to moves. That's never worked for Lil' S1, however, as like he told me the other day when I suggested he bundle up and go for a walk, "I've never really liked going outside." Too true, too true.

I am a bit worried about his lifestyle, to be honest, as all he seems to want to do is be on his screens -- play video games on one device while watching other people play video games on another device -- and eat junk food. He'll do other things when we make him. He does his homework somewhat willingly (and gets decent grades), and he does swim team, but left to his own devices, it's just that... devices. He doesn't even seem to want to hang out with his friends that much. He's not proactive with them at all, and a lot of his social engagements are still engineered by S, mom-to-mom arrangements, and he's about to age out of that phase of life completely, if he hasn't already.

There is a lot of chatter these days about how our devices are allowing us, encouraging us even, to essentially opt out of society, which is making us lonely and miserable, and it's only going to get worse as AI gets better and more intrusive. We know the secret to life. It's not actually a secret. We know what makes us happy and satisfied: close meaningful relationships with other people. And yet all of the profit motives in technology right now are aligned to do the exact opposite. A lot of people are getting rich by keeping us isolated in their fake worlds. It's a battle to do see who can pull us in and keep us there the best. It's hard for me to fight, and I'm a middle-age man with an already fully formed brain, who grew up at a time when being bored was still a thing and running around the neighborhood with whatever other kids you could find was how you passed the time.* What do you do if you're an impressionable teenager who's never known any other upbringing, and who is already conditioned to be stimulated by technology every waking moment of the day?

*Thankfully, this is largely how Lil' S2 passes the time as well. We're fortunate in that there are three or four kids on our block who are close to his age. But more so it's a personality thing. Unlike his brother, Lil' S2 likes running around and shooting hoops and riding bikes and throwing a ball. Different kids; different interests; different problems. Lucky S and me, we get the gamut of child difficulties. Although, we don't have a girl, so maybe I shouldn't be too sarcastic. I've heard they're a whole different ball of struggles.  

I don't mean that rhetorically. I mean it literally: What do you do? And what should we do as parents? When S gets back we will have to develop some sort of system to keep things in check. It might be no devices on school days or more requisite activities. I'm not exactly sure yet, but we gotta do something before these bad habits become even more entrenched. Parenting is weird thing. You want to cherish every moment you get with your children because you know how ephemeral it is, and yet you simultaneously cannot wait to come out the other end, when they are fully functional adults, and laugh at the things you used to worry about.

Anyway... as often happens, I set out to write about one thing and ended writing about something entirely different. I was going to write about Thanksgiving, but I'm almost out of time, so I'll just give you the abridged version. My sister came to town with her husband and two boys (20 and 17). My brother-in-law's parents live in Montgomery County, Maryland, so we were going to go to their house for Thanksgiving, but his mom came down with the flu earlier this week and had to cancel. Instead, we went to my brother-in-law's brother's house in Loudoun County, Virginia (a name that unfortunately makes me think of the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race every time I hear it). It was a good time -- laid back, fun, filling. It was nice to my sister and her family, even if only super briefly. I wish she would have stayed longer, but their whole trip kinda got messed up.

The food was provided by Wegman's, and it wasn't bad, probably just as good as your typical homemade Thanksgiving dinner. I successfully avoided overeating and still ended up with an nontrivial case of indigestion. The problem is that Lil' S1 made a cherry pie, but he made it with maraschino cherries, which are already sugar-soaked, so it was cloying sweet, but for some reason I ate an entire piece anyway. I tasted maraschino creeping up my esophagus for the rest of the night, no matter how many Tums I consumed. Even just thinking about it now makes me wince a little bit. Next time it's a slice of pumpkin pie and maybe,  maybe, a scoop of ice cream.

Alright, that's all for now. Until next time...  

 

Entry 786: Pocket Advocate

I have an idea for a product. It's a million-dollar idea if it's doable, but I don't know if it's doable. It certainly won't be done by me, because I'm not entrepreneurial -- few things sound worse to me than spending my waking hours trying to convince people to give me money -- but for somebody who actually has the business chops to do it, it could be a serious money maker. It's an AI app, and the working name is Pocket Advocate. Although, I also kinda like AIdvocate. I just worry people wouldn't know whether to pronounce it "A-I-vocate" or "aid-vocate." Anyway, here's my Shark Tank pitch...

What's the worse part of society right now? If you asked people to give their top ten answers to this question, I bet going to the doctor would be high on a lot of lists. Going to the doctor is terrible, and one big reason why it's terrible is because it's expensive, and it's confusingly expensive. You never know how much things are going to cost until you get the final bill. Even if you know your insurance plan inside and out (which most people don't), there are always little (and not so little) fees that get tacked on, and every medical clinic has their own policies and services that aren't explicitly spelled out anywhere. They just show up on your bill seemingly out of nowhere.

As an example, I got the bill for my doctor's appointment from a few weeks ago, and there was a charge for "Weekend/After 5:00 pm Service." I made the appointment online and nothing alerted me to this extra fee when I booked it. It wasn't that big, but it's still annoying. And I have a much more expensive example. When I got physical therapy done on my broken finger earlier this year, I was told there was a $10 copay due at each visit. Being that last time I got PT it was $70 a session out-of-pocket, this seemed too good to be true to me. Indeed it was, as after I "graduated" from my therapy, I got a bill for hundreds of dollars with an itemized listing of a bunch of treatments I got while I was there -- things like "hot paraffin wax" and "electrical stimulation." Apparently, it was a $10 copay plus a bunch of other costs I would find out about later.

The thing is, I wasn't even really mad about it because I'm so used to paying for medical expenses this way. I go online and find a doctor in my network, go see them, do what they say, get the bill a few weeks later, and hope I have enough money in my HSA to pay for it. I think a lot of people do things similarly. And that's where Pocket Advocate comes into play. It's an app you run on your phone whenever you go to the doctor, and it listens to everything everybody says and tells you how much your out-of-pocket bill is going to be as you go. When you first install it, you input your insurance information into it, and then when you make an appointment with the doctor, it reads all their documentation (either it grabs it off the web automatically, or you take a picture of it and it reads it that way), so it knows everything. Then it calculates all your costs in real time.

Think about how great this product would be. Not only would there be no surprises, but it could save you a lot of money, because it would allow you to better advocate for yourself (hence the name). For example, suppose the doctor says, "This mole looks benign, but we could get it biopsied just in case." *Ping* A notification from Pocket Advocate: A biopsy will add $250 to your bill. Now maybe you don't want it. Or when a doctor hands you a splint and says you should use it for a broken finger. *Ping* A splint will add $100 to your bill. Or *Ping* Ask how much this will cost. This same implement is available on Amazon for $35. Who wouldn't want this product? Just charge a few bucks to initiate a session plus a few cents per minute of use, and then that's you rolling in the dough. It's brilliant.

Now, there is a big question of whether or not this product is even possible. To that I say, if AI can take over the world, like has been speculated, then it can figure out how to calculate a medical bill in real time. And this would be an actual good use of AI -- a product that helps people by doing something no human could practically do. That's what AI should be used for, in my opinion. We don't need it to feed us heaping servings of internet slop -- which is largely what it does right now -- as we are already quite good at doing that ourselves.

------------------------------------ 

In other news, I'm currently watching two shows -- Pluribus and The Chair Company. I'm about halfway through each of them and think they are both excellent, for very different reasons. Pluribus has got that brilliant Vince Gilligan storytelling, and Rhea Seehorn is so good in everything. At first I was worried it was another zombie dystopia show -- I got serious The Last of Us vibes from the first half of the first episode -- but it's not that. If anything, it's a zombie utopia show. And it raises some interesting questions about humanity. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that I'm not sure I would choose the path the protagonist is going down. I'm not that defiantly individualistic.

As for The Chair Company, it's just funny. Tim Robinson isn't everybody's cup of tea -- S, for example, couldn't make it through the first episode of this show -- but he certainly is mine. The Chair Company makes me literally (and I mean that literally) laugh out loud a few times an episode. Tim Robinson is the master of coming up with things so completely weird and random that you can somehow still recognize as a joke. Most of the time when I hear people say How did they even come up with that?! in relation to comedy, it's about something that a lot of funny people could have come up with. Most funny people, even super funny people, sound a lot like other funny people. But with Tim Robinson, I'm legit How did he even come up with that? It's just so bizarre and hysterical.

Alright, I'm out of time. Until next time... 

Entry 785: It's The End Of The Shutdown As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Contrary to the parenthetical in this entry's title, I don't feel completely fine. I'm a little under the weather right now, which is incredibly annoying, being that I was just sick a few weeks ago. Usually I get at least, like, a three or four month buffer between illnesses. So, this is complete bullshit, as far as I'm concerned. It's just a cold, the type of thing that will pass in a few days, but a few days have not passed yet, so here I am, sniffling and snorting, sucking on cough drops, and rubbing my nose raw with tissues. The worst part is that it's really affecting my sleep. I actually feel pretty good during the day, and then at night, as my caffeine and adrenaline levels wane, my symptoms become much more acute (which isn't cute). I have this super irritating prickly-throated cough, and that's what makes it so hard to sleep -- both because it's just hard to fall asleep when you're coughing and because I'm sleeping in the guest room, so as not to disturb S with my hacking. Our guest bed is fine, but it's a bit like a hotel bed to me. It's just not comfortable as my actual bed because nothing ever is.

In better news, the government shutdown has final ended, which means things will at least move in the direction or normality, if not completely "get back to normal," again. This is a good thing, in my not-so-humble opinion, as I do not share the consternation of many on the left that this was some sort of grave capitulation by the ever feckless Democrats. If only they would just stand up to Trump! The obvious truth is the Dems were never going to get what they want -- a renewal of expiring health care subsidies -- this way. The reason being is simple: Shuttering the federal government hurts Democratic constituents way more than those of Republicans. That's it. That's the whole ballgame. You can't compel somebody into a deal they don't want, if the deal not going through will be worse for you than it will be for them. "Give us what we want or things are really gonna suck for us" is not a great negotiating tactic when the other side wants things to suck for you.

To be sure, a government shutdown is bad for almost everybody, but think about whom it most negatively affects. I'd say there are three many groups: 1) federal workers who are laid off, furloughed, or not paid during a shutdown; 2) recipients of essential federal aid (e.g., SNAP benefits); 3) airport travelers whose flights are canceled or delayed due to insufficient airport staffing. All three of these groups are more left than they are right, as I lay out below.

1) Not only does Trump not care about the vast majority of federal employees, but he just spent the first six months of his presidency completely gutting the federal workforce. The fact that so many thousands more were not getting paid during the shutdown probably made him less inclined to negotiate a stoppage, not more.

2) Ironically, there are probably more total Republican voters who benefit from SNAP than Democratic voters, but the only ones that Trump cares about, his hardcore base, have already demonstrated that they care much more about the cultural and spiritual gains they get from Trump than any material goods they lose. They feel seen and validated by Trump. In their minds, he elevated them from disrespected cultural losers into a social force the liberal elitists have no choice but to reckon with. To them, that's worth losing benefits. They probably dismiss all that as a hoax, anyway... as they take out a second mortgage to pay for their increased health insurance deductibles.  

3) Obviously, people of all political stripes use airports. But who do you think travels more, highly educated, upper-middle class urbanites and suburbanites, or less educated, working-class rural folks? Which of these is the base for which political party again?

So, yeah, I'm glad that eight Democratic senators broke rank and voted to get things moving again. It won't even be a big political hit for the Dems, unless they self-obsess about what a terrible capitulation it was, which certain members of the party seem intent on doing. They succeeded in bringing the issue of expiring healthcare subsidies to the forefront of many voters minds, and now they can campaign on that without the pall of a shutdown eclipsing everything else. One thing Trump does that I think is pretty effective politically is to just declare victory for everything no matter what happens. It's phony and delusion and often very bad for the country, so I wouldn't like it if Dems did this too, but I think they could stand to learn something from it. It's hard to make progress on your political agenda when seemingly one of the core tenets of your party is that progress can never be made.

Until next time... 

Entry 784: Hodgepode, Olio, Miscellany

It's a fire-through-a-bunch-of-topics type of night. So, let's get to it.

• Tuesday was election day at various places around the country, and it was kinda nice to see our democracy isn't completely kaput just yet. Dems won gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia by larger than expected margins. The last one is particularly nice to see, as, living in DC, it hits close to home. To be honest, however, I'm mostly just glad I won't be inundated with political ads while watching sports for another year or so. 
  
  
• Speaking of ads I've seen too many times, it's time to pull the one of the guy running on a treadmill to Collective Soul in his daughter's old room out of rotation. It was kinda funny the first time I watched it (I like the little flourishes the dad does while running), much less so the past eight hundred. Also, note to Liberty Mutual: Your ad campaigns -- both Limu Emu and the quirky ones that are always on a pier for some reason -- are doing the exact opposite of what they're supposed to do for me. I'm so tired of watching these commercials that if I ever need to switch insurance companies, I will intentionally look elsewhere first. 
  
  
• Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral race in New York, so good for him, I guess. He's not really my cup of tea. He strikes me as a politician rich people think poor people want. (In fact, I heard on a podcast today that he did better in the affluent areas of NYC than he did in the working class areas.) However, given that the other options were a disgraced retread, who already lost in the primary, and a kooky right-winger in a beret, I might have voted for Mamdani were I a Knickerbocker. I am, however, very skeptical that any of his initiatives will lead to any real improvements in the lives of New Yorkers. But who knows? It will be interesting to watch from afar, at least.
  
  
• I watched this YouTube video called "Plot Hole or Not Hole," in which Ben Lindbergh (a podcaster I like) interviews Vince Gilligan about a potential plot hole in one of the last episodes of Breaking Bad. I really enjoyed hearing Gilligan indulge Lindbergh as he broke it all down. I love when artists love getting into the weeds about their past work. Nothing is worse than the grumpy artiste who acts too cool for school about this type of thing. It's super pretentious, and it's makes you feel like a loser for caring about something so much more than the person who actually made it.
  
  
• Typically I'm not that bothered by plot holes because I rarely notice them. I'm not a big plot person in general. I want great characters, first and foremost. Then I care about other things--drama, comedy, tension, release, music, mood, etc.--before I care about plot. With that said, I do have two big plot holes that come to mind every time plot holes are mentioned...
  
  
• One, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, how did Indiana and Marion get back to DC after witnessing (or not, since their eyes were closed) the opening of the ark? They were alone on some remote island in the middle of the Aegean Sea that they arrived on via submarine. Presumably, neither of them knows how to operate a German U-boat and navigate back to the US with a crew of two. And did they or somebody else come back for the ark, or did they take it with them? Seems like it would have to be the former, but then what did they do with the ark--this magical artifact of unthinkable power that could destroy humanity if it fell into the wrong hands--while they were traveling the thousands of miles (in 1936) back to the US? Just leave it there?
  
  
• Two, in KPop Demon Hunters, what's the resolution when the biggest boy band on the planet just up and disappears one day? Boy bands break up all the time, but they only figuratively disappear. In actuality, they go on to host reality TV shows or something like that. I mean, what would have happened if, in 1997, every one of the Backstreet Boys simultaneously vanished off the face of the Earth? Would we have all just shrugged our shoulders and turned up the Spice Girls, as the public does with Huntr/x in KPDH?
  
  
• I mentioned in a previous entry that I was experiencing some internal inflammation. Turns out it was nothing, and I was pretty sure it was nothing when it was happening, but I got some testing done anyway, because I don't want to be that guy who dies of a treatable ailment because he couldn't be bothered to take the two hours out of his day to get the warning signs diagnosed. I went in on Friday, and the technician who carried out the test told me "off-the-record" that it was unremarkable, so I felt even more assured there was nothing to worry about. I got the official report from my doctor's office today, and it says the results are "unmarketable." Damn! I was hoping to put them up on eBay. There goes that idea! (The NP who wrote the report also examined me, and it's clear that English is not her first language, which likely explains the erroneous word choice.)
  
  
• I stopped doing intermittent fasting. No real reason why--I just got tired of it and caved to my appetitive desires. As those in the body positivity camp will tell you, most diets don't stick forever. I agree with this. However, I disagree that this means that "dieting doesn't work," which is something else you will hear from the BP folks. Diets do work while you're doing them, and they often work very well. When I'm on my 16-8 plan, I eat better, I feel better, and I look better. Those are all good things. If I could diet like this consistently, instead of only, like, half the time, it would be even better. But let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the half-decent. I don't understand why dieting off-and-on is considered to "not work," when it's significantly better than eating unhealthily all the time. If you are yo-yo dieting and losing and gaining and losing and gaining massive amounts of weight in short periods of time then, yeah, that's probably unhealthy. But that's not what I do, and I don't think that's what most other people do either. I eat how I want, and then I get to the point where my jeans are noticeable tighter than they were before, and then I diet, and it works, and my jeans fit comfortably again, and then I stop because dieting is hard, and I'm only human, and so I slowly gain back the weight I lost, until my jeans are tight again, and the loop continues. It's not ideal, but it works okay for me, and I don't think I'm special in this regard.

Alright, time to wrap this up. Until next time...