People that reach high levels of achievement in disparate fields have always fascinated me, with my personal hero being Hedy Lamarr.
The question is whether this kinda thing can be taught. Like, can a parent teach someone to be successful in many areas?
Long before the kid came into existence, I was trying to figure this out for whatever kid I might eventually have.
The algorithm that I came up with:
Lifetime curiosity + the ability to properly research + discipline = success in various fields
Because, at least for me, I try to keep my childhood curiosity alive.
With the internet and all the tools out there for research, it’s a lot easier than it used to be to find out information – although separating the wheat from the chaff is more difficult than ever what with the sheer amount of information out there.
Have no idea if this is correct, or if it’ll work with everyone, but I believe hope it will.
Suppose only time will tell.
Me: Try it. Nothing beats beets. Him: I don’t like beets. Me: Well, if you like candy and cake, you should like beets. Him: What? Why? Me: Well, most American sugar comes from beets. Her: Is that true? How do you know all this stuff? Me: (shrugging) I always wonder things. So, then I look it up and a shocking amount of it sticks in my head for some reason.
Don’t think I’ve ever lost my cool and was happy about the results. If I can give the kid anything, hopefully, it’s a better sense of being calm and calculated.
To this end, I personally have been re-reading (ok, skimming) Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and also other stoic books here and there in the hopes that all this anger at the injustice of Alison and my dad’s suffering and deaths somehow becomes more manageable.
It’s a daily struggle, I have to admit.
One really sweet thing that we’ve been doing here at Casa Lo is to have regular board game nights with the kids.
It’s a small and silly thing but one that I appreciate greatly because children – at this age and younger – learn so much in competition and games.
Forgot to take pics, so I took the pic from this old entry in 2011 with Alison at Paul’s old pad.
We’ve been playing a few card games as well as board games, particularly what we call The Bean Game – addictively fun – and Settlers of Catan.
Both boys are pretty competitive but, because my son is younger, he’s still dealing with the emotions that come with winning and losing.
One night, recently, the kid had a particularly bad night and lost his cool, so I brought him to his room to have a chat with him.
I think I want what every good parent wants: For one’s children to be better than they are.
Hope I have enough time here to accomplish that.
After all, if we’re being honest here, it’s really the main reason I’m here.
Me: What’s the obligation of a champion, boy? Him: To act like a champion. Me:…at all times. Don’t forget that last part: At all times. Him: But you lose your temper too, papa! Me: I’m aware. I’m working on that. And that’s kinda my point: You can be better than me. And I want you to be better than me. Listen, if you act like a musician, with enough practice, you’ll be one. If you act like a BJJ player, you’ll be one. And if you act like a champion, you’ll be one. But you have to do it at all times. There’s no such thing as a parttime champion.
Her: You were a nerdy kid when you were younger? I don’t believe that. Me: Do you remember the kids that never got picked for any sports games? Her: (laughing) Yeah. That was you? Me: No. I was the kid that those kids beat up.
Years ago, I told you about a legal saying that really changed how I looked at the world: Sine qua non.
It’s Latin for, “But for…”
Meaning, But for John losing his job, he never would have started drinking, which lead to his suicide.
The self-importance of these people is what’s galling.
Or, But for the girls’ bullying, Annie never would have changed schools.
Thought of that and Ruth Bader Ginsburg the other night when Trump won the election.
Ruth was asked – begged, really – to step down while Obama was president so that he could appoint a liberal judge that would protect Roe. And yet she refused.
But for that refusal, Trump never would have been able to appoint three justices to the bench.
But for that appointment, the Supreme Court never would have been able to overturn Roe.
But for that appointment, the Supreme Court never would have been able to expand the power the presidency for Trump.
But for that expansion, Trump would probably have done his last few weeks of campaigning at the height of a trial for keeping classified documents.
But for that trial being dismissed, Trump may not have won the presidency.
Couple her arrogance with that of Biden’s – who should have stepped down years ago to allow a successor that could actually be likeable enough to win – and here we are.
In the end, it wasn’t that the country voted for a complete pig of a human being…
…it’s that the Democrats were so arrogant they couldn’t even beat a complete pig of a human being.
And now – Ruth, Joe – how sad it is that everything you spent your life trying to help and protect is crumbling away by your own self-importance and arrogance.
Location: the kid’s schoolyard, talking to his teacher, hoping they’ll all be ok with a gunman on the loose
Mood: carb-eating, rum-swilling, machine
Music: this song is about you, playa (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.e
Even now, they’re pretty rare because people just got used to going without.
However, the rats in NYC may change alla that.
See, Mayor Adams is convinced that the garbage – fulla food – laying around for hours overnight in plastic bags is helping the insane surge in rats in NYC.
I think he may be onto something.
One of his major plans are to deal with the obscene garbage situation in the city by:
Standardizing garbage cans for everyone in the whole city – so everyone has to get cans that look like the ones below with a lid on them.
Making everyone separate out their compostable materials.
He’d never done one before but was game to tackle it.
Unfortunately, my sink was easily 40 years old, so the drain was rusted tight.
Took us two hours just to be able to remove it, which we did with a specialized tool.
Him: Man, once we had the right tool, it came right out. Me: I remember my buddy Buckley telling me once that nothing’s ever an issue if you have the right tool.
Since this was the first time he’d ever installed one, lots of things went wrong.
Like this arm was the wrong size and leaked everywhere.
Wally planned to be here to paint and install it for about four-to-five hours but ended up staying 10 hours and had to return two days later to finally fix everything.
BUT, I have a garbage disposal now in NYC!
I think I’m gonna start running tours to show it off with a reasonable $5 admission ticket.
I’ll let you know when I roll that out.
In the meanwhile, here’s a quick time-lapse video I shot of it in action.
It’s 1.25 horsepower, which is about 5X the power of an average garbage disposal, so it chews through most anything but I’m just using fruit peels and eggshells to keep the gross factor to a minimum.
If you don’t have one, definitely consider installing one!
Location: a NYC pad WITH garbage disposal and freshly painted doors and gates
Mood: accomplished
Music: I will try to fix you (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
The first thing that I do every morning is down two cups of cold green tea to (a) fight cancer and (b) hydrate so I don’t have another gout attack.
Interestingly, since I’ve done this at the suggestion of my buddy Thor, I’ve not gotten a second gout attack since the first one back in March of 2021, which I’m hoping was just a one-off fluke.
In any case, while I was groggy since I just woke up, I heard a super loud POP, almost like gunshot and I swore it came from my fridge, but I didn’t see anything.
But then I looked closely a few days later and saw this in the back of my fridge.
Evidently, my fridge is too cold, and a can of soda exploded when the soda inside froze.
I’m just glad it happened while the kid was away since he’s a lot smaller than me so any potential injury woulda been lined up with his face.
Her: Do not get injured again! I wanna go out this weekend. Me: I promise nuthin.
Speaking of injuries, the past few weeks has been a series of annoying ones.
Whenever I get injured, it’s usually a white belt that has no idea what he’s doing, and I get injured.
My last injury was when a 200-pound 30-year-old former wrassler fell on me and torqued my shoulder.
Well, that was until last week, when a purple belt (essentially a level-three grappler) caught my ankle and did a belly-down ankle lock, which is one of the more dangerous ankle locks.
Then he twisted it like a nutcase within two seconds of grabbing it.
Me: Jesus! (after 10 seconds of just lying on my back trying to eat the pain) Duuuude… Him: Sorry about that. Me: You’re a purple belt? Him: Uh, yeah. Me: Dude…that was not cool.
So, I hobbled off the mat and ended up taking five days off.
But I’d promised the Firecracker we’d do something fun for the past weekend and I felt bad I kept cancelling on her.
So, I rested at home all week, icing and compressing my ankle until I felt I was good enough to head out with her over the weekend.
Me: I have all this useless information in my head for some reason. Like, which do you think came first, Mexico or New Mexico? Her: I would think Mexico. Me: And you would be wrong.
If social media has taught me one thing, it’s that (a) people are easily fooled because (b) we put a outsized value on common sense – but “common sense,” differs radically from one group to another.
For example, the German word for “debt” is the same as their word for “fault” and “shame” (in the sense of, “what a shame”) which tells you a lot about how they look at borrowing.
First, kill all the lawyers – this saying is “wrong,” because people don’t realize it means that lawyers can save them, that’s why they have to be killed first.
These are all things that have the air of truth but only a tiny bit of actual truth to them.
Like all kids, he asks a million questions.
But, for some reason, when kids grow up, they stop asking questions and just assume that what they’re told is correct.
After a while, people just assume things – they don’t even need anyone to tell them stuff.
That’s why I’m hoping that the boy’ll always be curious and intellectually inquisitive.
Him: But it fits! Me: Kinda. You’re definitely Brittney Spearsing it here.
Clothes that I just bought for the kid last year are already not fitting him.
I remember that, as a kid, I loved this yellow shirt with a red V on it. Wore it until my bellybutton was constantly out, all Britney Spears like.
Think my parents were just happy that I didn’t ask for new clothes, but I always think that Alison woulda wanted him to be put together so I try my best.
My best being a sliding scale.
(c) Getty Images
Him: Why don’t you ever show my face? Me: Because I don’t have that right. At least, I shouldn’t have that right.
Been enjoying my new gym – it’s interesting rolling with people from a completely new gym because no one knows my game and I know no one else’s game, so each roll feels very different than at my old gym.
Recently rolled with a very talented but smaller female. While I could have easily beat her, that wasn’t why I was there; I was there to get better.
Just because I can, doesn’t mean I should.
In a way, that’s why I don’t put up pictures of my kid where you can clearly see his face.
See, I grew up in a time where you could grow up in relative anonymity.
Never realized what a gift that was until YouTube because – MAN – did I do some jaw-droppingly bone-headed things when I was younger.
Legit, thank god everyone didn’t walk around with a video camera because I would most likely be hated by the world writ large.
In that sense, I feel that it’s not fair or right that I – as someone much bigger and much older than my kid – have the right to take away my son’s chance to be anonymous.
Just because I can, doesn’t mean I should.
He’s a little kid right now but little kids grow up to be adults.
When he is one, he might resent not being able to tell his own story his own way.
If you think about it, the thing that probably pisses you off the most is when someone else tells your story.
Janet? She’s such a slut. Did you hear last Friday, she…
Tom? He’s a loser. When we were kids…
That guy? Lemme tell you about him…
But I have to balance that with the fact that I’m proud of him – so proud of him – and what he can do so I wanna show him off.
And that’s really what it is with parents, isn’t it?
They want to show their kids off, not for their kids sake, but for their own. And that’s not right, I don’t think.
Just because they can, doesn’t mean they should.
So, my concession is that I blur or hide his face and name so that when/if he does want to have a public face/name, that’s his choice to make when he’s old enough to make that choice.
For now, I realize that, just because I could put up anything I want about him, I shouldn’t.
Me: One day, you’ll be old enough to decide who you are and how you want the world to see you. You and your friends are gonna be some of the first kids on the planet that’s lost that right to be a nobody. Him: (thinking) What if I wanna be someone? Me: That’s your choice to make. I’ve lived my life. I don’t have the right to live your life as well. You get to decide who and what you want to be. (pause) For what it’s worth, you’re always someone to me. You’re my most important someone.
Location: a pier with four lovely ladies – including the Firecracker – the boy, and a bottle of white
Mood: so. full.
Music: I just wanna be someone. Well, doesn’t everyone? (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
Her: I like room temperature soda. Me: I only realized now that I’m dating a psychopath.
Not been sleeping well for a while now. It’s a long story.
Been thinking about Alison and my dad a lot lately for a whole buncha reasons we don’t need to get into, but one small reason is Princess Kate.
The fact that she and King Charles both have cancer should be a wake up call to everyone for a simple reason:
If two people that have the best of everything – healthcare, food, trainers, etc. – can get cancer, anyone can.
You definitely can.
In the 1970s, a fella you never heard of named Kotaku Wamura was the mayor of a Japanese town you never heard of, Fudai.
When Warmura was a kid in 1933, he saw a tsunami kill 439 people in Fudai and made a kid’s promise to himself – he would prevent this from ever happening to Fudai ever again.
When he became mayor in 1970, through sheer force of will, he convinced the town to erect a 51-foot-high gate as a public works project.
He, and his supporters were mocked mercilessly as fools.
Fast forward some 40+ years to the Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011, which I wrote about before, and killed over 19,000 people and destroyed at least 45 towns and cities.
But the village and almost all its people were almost completely unscathed.
Not a day goes by without someone saying something chiding about what I eat, how I live, or what I do.
“You eat that much peanut butter?”
“Sardines? Fish, out of a can?! Disgusting!”
“Do you really need to roll around with sweaty men every day?”
“That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?”
Essentially, the argument I hear is always something that starts with, “Everyone…”
Something is fucked in our lives and we’re all dying of cancer. I dunno what it is but I’m trying to go where science is telling me to go.
And I still might get it because the odds are shit.
But I’m gonna do everything I can to try to avoid it if possible.
You should too.
Wamura died in 1997 at age 88 and never saw that he was right. But he was right.
And I think I’m right here; just like Wamura didn’t know when the next tsunami would be, he knew it would come eventually just like I know cancer will touch alla us at some point if it hasn’t already.
Cancer doesn’t give a shit if you’re a king, a princess, a new mother, or a nobody.
It’s here to end – or at least massively fuck up – your life, if you don’t do something about it.
I’m not the one that’s living an extreme life, IMHO.
To me, the people living an extreme life are the ones that know that there’s a close to 50/50 chance at getting the emperor of all maladies and doing nuthin meaningful about it.
Me: The problem is that you’re homeless and a stranger in a strange land. You’re not valued by him and never will be. But your friends and family are here. Her: I can’t afford to live in NYC any more, Logan. I don’t have a job and I’m not 20 anymore. Me: Plenty of people – your parents and mine – came here with less and spoke even shittier English than you… Her: (laughs) Me: …they all survived. They all thrived. It’s time.
A dear friend of mine, who moved away to be with the man of her dreams suddenly found herself in a nightmare.
She gave up everything – her home, her friends, her family, and her job, to be with this fella.
That’s her story to tell so I’ll end that part here.
But I told her things that I never told anyone.
Never told you either.
Because I not only lost both my families in 2017, but I also lost my career.
Never told you, but when I lectured in Malaga, over a decade ago, my topic was the right of publicity versus the right of privacy.
With the rise of computational power, we’re rapidly coming to a point where we don’t need an actual actor or singer but merely their likeness to create art. And that will open up a whole new world of possibilities, both for good and bad. – Logan
Watched one lawyer talk about it, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t angry and jealous – because the focus of my entire practice was going to be about the intersection of the rights of publicity and privacy.
I knew a decade ago that this current AI crisis was coming and I wanted to be at the forefront of it all.
Her: Holy shit, you were ahead of the curve, Logan! Me: Yeah, by over a decade. I’m gonna be honest with you, I threw myself a pity party last week thinking that coulda been me.
That fucking cancer took almost everything from Alison and me.
12 years of work, poof. Gone.
I’m still a lawyer but I’m not…that lawyer anymore.
I secretly used pictures of Alison throughout my lecture.
After all, that’s what Alison did. Felt I had to respect her sacrifices and do the same.
I just said that the fucking cancer took almost everything.
Almost because I still had the boy.
Somehow, through all my chemicals and madness, I sobered up enough to remember him and how much he meant to Alison, and me.
Knew I had to make a home for him with me, however incomplete and inelegant that was.
That kid saved me and, together, we made this sad place – which was full of some seriously unspeakable and fucked-up things – a happy(ish) home for both of us.
And I told my friend all this just to let her know that it’s possible.
Me: I’m not making light of your situation. It’s gonna be shitty and hard. But I just want you to know that you can survive this. You can survive this blow. Because, somehow, I did. Her: (silence then laughing) I can’t believe I’m saying this but you’re making a lotta sense. Me: (laughing) I’m as surprised as you are. (pause) Listen, X, it’s done. That place isn’t your home, not anymore. But here, you matter to a lotta people. Me included. Her: (sighing) OK, Logan. Lemme think about it. Me: Do that. It’s time to come home.
I went to college in Cornell, which has some of the most Asians of any school, about 1 outta 5.
Anywho, my college girlfriend was Korean but went to a different college entirely.
One day, I was walking home when I saw a young woman that had her very distinct gait and I swore it was her.
As I got closer, it turns out it was her – she’d left school early to come up to my college to surprise me.
There’s a software company I’ve been following for the past year because it has a rather unique business model; its software aggregates data and then makes predictions based on the data it’s gathered.
Since the Ukraine war has happened, Palantir has been offering its services to Ukraine and I believe it’s Palantir and the western armaments – versus just the weaponry itself – which is why Ukraine has been punching above its weight so consistently.
This is not at all to take away from the sheer bravery and discipline of the Ukrainians.
But it tracks with what I’ve always believed: The most dangerous people/things are not always the strongest but the ones with the most intelligence.
If that were not the case, it’d be people in zoo cages and lions walking free with the keys instead of the other way around.
In any case, the software has access to 306 commercial satellites that can see as close as 11 feet from the ground.
With this data, Palantir can figure out which are enemy movements – to such specificity as which platoon and commander – and can predict what these enemy troops are most likely to do and offer the Ukrainians the most likely scenario that will happen.
The Ukrainians can then act accordingly.
In that way, Palantir can recognize enemy troop movements similar to how I could tell from a vast distance that it was my then girlfriend and not some other person.
The data I collected – the visual recognition of her particular gait – allowed me to realize that my then-girlfriend was visiting me, without her telling me she was there.
Similarly, Palantir takes what it knows about people/troops and figures out who they are by their unique traits – like a gait.
As a child of the original Terminator films and the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, it makes me uneasy how very good Palantir is at what it does.
On the flip side, it’s trading at $16.42 today, off its three-year high of $35.18.
I’m nothing if not a ruthless capitalist – with a sentimental streak.
On a much lighter note, with both of our kids away, the Firecracker and I are doing basic couple things like grabbing drinks around the way and watching reality TV and cooking shows.
Although I suspect that, while we’re both watching the same program, we’re experiencing them differently.
Her: (watching TV) Serves you right, lady! Your hubris went…pluberis. Me: (shakes head) Her: (turning to me, apologetically) I tried to abort halfway through but I was already committed to it. Me: This has got to go into the blog. You brought this onto yourself.
Location: my basement, trying to figure out why the lights won’t turn on. The circuit breaker tripped
Mood: recovering
Music: This world can be so cold (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
