The mayor office announced congestion pricing the other day.
There were more cops than protestors but I suppose that’s a good thing.
At least everyone was dressed warmly – it’s been brick around here, lately.
If I told you that I opened up a can of coke and was shocked that no soda came out anywhere but the hole on top, you would think I was just being strange.
Obviously, if I opened a can of soda, the only place any soda would come out of would be the hole I created when I opened the can, yeah?
Conversely, if I didn’t open the can of soda, no soda would come out.
All this seems elementary, no?
But what if I said to you something like, “You should wear a hat because most of your body heat comes from your head?”
To me, it sounds precisely the same as if I said, “Most soda comes outta the can from the hole you made.”
Do you know why most of your body heat comes off your head when your head’s not covered?
Because: Your head’s not covered and the rest of your body is.
Like, if you go out into a wintery day, fully dressed, including gloves and boots – guess where most of your body heat would escape?
That’s right: Your head. Because it’s not covered and the rest of your body is.
So, it’s technically true that, “Most of your body heat comes from your head.”
But that’s super misleading.
It has the air of truth but only a little bit of actual truth to it.
It’s more accurate to say, “Heat’s gonna escape from your head because that’s the part of your body that’s not covered up.”
This has driven me mad for decades.
DECADES!
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Location: next door, having my third plate of shrimp and checking out heavy machinery
Mood: warm
Music: Baby, you can steal my sheets (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
Been on a different quest lately, this time to find purple sweet potatoes – that is to say, purple fleshed sweet potatoes, versus just purple skinned sweet potatoes.
I’d been searching for it for a while now, including at various green markets throughout the city, but it’s almost always the purple skinned but white fleshed variety.
With that said, after leaving the gym this past Saturday, it was a 10-minute wait until the next train, so I decided to look around for paw-paws.
No paw-paws were to be found BUT I came across this tiny little sign on a small table with purple potatoes and grabbed a few pounds of it.
With that in hand, I decided to continue looking for the paw-paws when I came across some Adirondak Blue potatoes from Cornell University.
Me: Are these sweet potatoes or just regular potatoes? Him: Just regular ones. (long pause) Except they’re purple. Me: Noted.
These I’d never heard of, so I picked up some of these as well.
Him: I dunno. One out of ten? Me: (shaking head) No, man. It’s one outta three. Him: GTFOH. Me: (shaking head) For real, man.
Alison’s sickness has had a profound effect on me as a parent.
The reason why I’ve been searching for things like purple sweet potatoes is their amazing health benefits – particularly because those that eat it as a staple carbohydrate often life to 100.
I cannot tell you how many times during a week that I meet people that think that I live a particularly rigorous life, when it comes to diet and exercise but what is now normal for most Americans.
But the normal American diet and lifestyle means that one outta three people will get cancer in their lifetime.
That’s just insane. That means, outta a group of a dozen friends FOUR will get cancer in their life.
So, I do what I can so that the kid’s lifestyle is as anti-cancer as I can make it.
Nuthin’s guaranteed in life but I’m trying to do whatever I can to make this kid’s life better.
Hopefully, his seeing me drink predominately green tea and eat things like purple sweet potatoes and head to the gym four times a week will have a lasting effect on his own choices.
That is, of course, if they actually like it.
Me: What do you think? Him: (makes a face) I don’t like it. Me: (to Firecracker) What about you? What do you think? Her: I dunno. It has an aftertaste of…Listerine? Me: Wha?! I don’t taste that all. You’re crazy. (much later) OK, I taste it now. Her: See! I told you! Listerine! Me: (grumble) Lemme think about this…
The kid(s) have been talking about going on another cruise non-stop.
Honestly, I kinda wanna retire completely just so I can go on cruises indefinitely.
That entry was a long time ago – I had just started seeing Alison then – and when I wrote that, my working at Times Square was almost a decade before that.
Well, when I went to see that Broadway show with the Firecracker, I showed her my old office.
Me: See that building there? I worked there for years. Had a perfect view of Times Square back then. And I lived just four blocks from work. I could wake up at 9:10 for a 9:30 meeting. Her: I’m so jealous! I can’t imagine that.
I can’t either, actually. That was almost three decades ago.
Did you know that, Cleopatra’s reign (ending 30 BCE) is closer to today, about 2,050 years, than to the construction of the pyramids, which were probably built about 2630 BCE, or 2,600 years before she started ruling Egypt?
In other words, when Cleopatra was born, the pyramids were already 2,600 years old/ancient.
In some ways, I look around the city and feel that about myself.
People think that I’m old with life experiences but they have no idea how old I actually am and how many different lives I’ve led.
Me: I took my bar review class there. Her: Right there? In the theatre? Me: (nodding) Yup. It was like a solid month, five days a week, for eight hours a day.
That’s the thing about living in the same place for five decades. There are old ghosts everywhere.
Everything reminds me of some possible past, whether I want it to or not.
Location: home, realizing I forgot to get the kid tickets to a show. He’ll be so bummed.
Mood: disappointed
Music: drop your drink, then they bring you more (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
Me: Man, this coffee is great…wait, what time is it? Her: (checking watch) 3:23? Me: Dammit!
When we were out in Long Island, the Firecracker and I chatted about being parents, which we usually do.
The most important thing for me, as a parent, is to teach the kid how to think critically think.
Again, how to think, not what to think.
The recent Titanic sub disaster made me think a lot about smart people making terrible decisions.
James Cameron, the director of the film Titanic – and an amateur sub enthusiast himself – said that he knew exactly what happened to the sub before alla the details were even out.
It’s easy to call the CEO’s decisions things like stupid and moronic but it’s a lot more complex, and dangerous, than that.
Because people seem to look at decisions like singular events:
I decided to go to law school.
I decided to have waffles for brekkie.
But they’re not that at all: All decisions are the cumulation of processes in our heads:
I decided to go to law school because my dad wanted me to and I didn’t feel I was ready to stop learning yet. And each of those two reasons had many reasons beneath that; my dad felt that lawyers and doctors were the best professions that two children of immigrants could have. Plus, I spent my life alone with books, so I wanted to find a way to continue that.
I do occasionally have waffles for breakfast, but only when I haven’t had carbs in a while so I’m in a relative deficit of carbs and can “afford,” to splurge on something like waffles. But if I do that, I then have to be in the gym for two consecutive days.
Sometimes these processes happen in the blink of an eye, sometimes, these decisions take weeks, months, or even years to fully happen.
The CEO most likely made a series of smaller poor decisions based on various cognitive biases that he had – the worst decision being to use carbon fiber for the hull instead of metal – ultimately resulting in the disaster.
What I’m hoping to give this kid are good tools to process each step of any decision as best as he can.
Which is not, at all, to say that it’s or I’m perfect.
I’ve made some terrible decisions in life; decisions that I still ruminate on late in the night when I can’t sleep.
And I try to figure out which tool I ignored, disregarded, or am simply missing.
For example, I have a rule where I never have coffee/caffeine after 3PM.
But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve disregarded that rule for one reason or another – societal pressure, sunk cost bias, confirmation bias, optimism bias, overconfidence, etc – with disastrous results.
My son will make bad decisions in life. That’s what people do and that’s part of how we learn.
I just hope that (a) they’re not decisions that he can’t change later on and (b) he continually makes more good decisions than bad ones, and (c) he gets better at making good decisions as he ages.
I’m still working on alla that myself.
Me: I guess I’ll just toss it. Seems like such a waste. Her: Do you want to be up all night? Me: (sigh) Fair. What a shame…
Last Thursday was hot and steamy in the city. If I had the option, I woulda stayed home all day.
But I didn’t have that option because my buddy Hen Z – who’s a Paxibellum student of both kali and BJJ – invited me to come to the premier of a short video about a group that he started, called the:
“Dragon Combat Club, a grassroots self-defense organization formed in the wake of brutal anti-Asian attacks. The film they made explores community solidarity, self-expression, and the fundamental right to be safe.”
So, at 7PM last week, made my way down to 87 Lafayette St, which actually turned out to be an abandoned Fire Station, number 31.
There, I ran into my buddies Katrina and Prin – both of whom take kali and BJJ at Paxibellum as well.
It was weird, I felt like a mini-celebrity because I met so many people that knew me from Scenic Fights.
Him: Hi! Are you…? Me: (holding out hand) Logan, nice to meet you. Him: I’ve seen all your videos!
Which makes sense because Scenic Fights and I were part of the germination of the concept of using weapons for self-defense.
I’d been watching Hen and his group grow from an idea to its current status as a community-based organization and I’m glad he’s doing it to try and be a positive influence for the Asian-American community.
The video itself was pretty cool, and relatively short – I’ve linked to it below and think it’s worth the 10 minutes that it runs.
For some reason, though, the organizers cut the fans for a solid 15 minutes or so in the beginning and the air conditioners weren’t doing much at all.
I was melting during that time and couldn’t really cool down much, even after they turned the fans back on.
Still, it was a good experience and one I’m glad to have been a part of, however ancillarily.
Speaking of Scenic Fights, this is a wild thing to wrap my head around, but it turns out that, just on YouTube, we’ve had over 101 million – 101 MILLION– views.
That’s full-on nuts.
Then again, I really do believe what I wrote below in my IG account:
Location: home, trying to hook up an eGPU via thunderbolt and a G29 steering wheel via that to a NUC for the boy
Mood: exhausted but fulla tacos
Music: woke up knowing where I am, if just a little bit (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
Prob for the best; I’m not sure a lotta people would go to McDonald’s to order a hot dog.
I saw The Flash when it came out because he was always one of my favourite superheroes – mainly because super speed is the only power I think really matters.
That’s an entry for another day, I suppose.
But, while I don’t think it deserved to be as maligned as much as it has been, I wanted to tell you why I think the movie failed.
As a comic book nerd, I always gravitated more towards DC comics than Marvel comics, even though I really liked both.
See, Marvel likes to ground its characters in realism – the teenage Peter Parker trying to make ends meet while dealing with massive guilt, the alcoholic Tony Stark, the rage-filled, revenge-seeking Frank Castle, etc.
Comparatively, DC heroes are like otherworldly gods – Superman is essentially a god from the heavens, The Flash is as fast and mercurial as Mercury, Wonder Woman is a goddess.
The thing about these gods, though, is that they are innately good, and – more than anything – bastions of hope.
Me: Did you like Man of Steel? Him: No, because he killed Zod. Snyder doesn’t understand Superman never kills. He doesn’t understand that Batman doesn’t use guns. He doesn’t understand what makes them…them. DC Comics are all about hope. But Synder’s film have no joy, no hope. It’s all spectacle without heart.
And that, I think, is why The Flash bombed.
It’s one of the saddest and darkest superhero films out there; everyone and everything is disposable. Heroes are introduced merely to die. No one and nothing matters.
Look, don’t get me wrong, I understand that tragedy is a part of life.
Fuck, if anyone’s life is a tragedy, it’s mine (albeit, fulla joy).
Plus, there’s nuthin wrong with a cinematic tragedy; but kids trying to see their fave hero on the big screen – especially a DC-based one – want the good guys to win.
Evil to be overcome. Good to prevail.
Goddammit, I thought my own tragedy wouldn’t actually be one. Thought we would prevail. But I was wrong.
I digress.
In any case, just like you don’t go to McDonalds for a hot dog, you don’t go to a DC based film to leave feeling hopeless.
And that – not just the bad CGI (which I didn’t hate) and the foibles of the main actor – is why I think the movie failed.
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.
With that, they make warfare akin to a deadly recipe except that if you do steps 1-16 correctly you’ll end up with mass enemy casualties instead of a soufflé.
I’m conflicted on this point.
Obviously, the Russians are the aggressors here and for everyone not a Republican, clearly the bad guys here.
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.
Never realized just how true that statement was until I became a dad.
Seeing the kid every day, I don’t really notice how much he’s grown, day-by-day, but looking at pictures, I’m shocked how much he’s changed.
The fella that wrote The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe said something similar: Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes but, when we look back everything is different?
It’s so true.
Everything, and everyone, is so different now.
The kid finished school today.
It seems like we just started and it’s summer vacation already.
I (barely) remember taking him to preschool when he was just 18-months old and I gave him a rum-carrier as a bookbag.
Now, he’s a full-fledged kid with opinions – lots of them.
Me: How on earth do you not like 紅豆湯, kid? I loved that growing up. Him: People like different things, papa.
Alison loved this kid so much the short time she was here with him. She woulda loved him to the moon and back if she could see him now.
As I do.
Met up with some a group of fathers from the school for some beer and tacos the other day.
I really only talked to two of them, but a solid eight people showed up. It was interesting finding out about their lives.
Me: You’re a lawyer? My condolences. (laughing) I’m one as well. Him: What do you do? Me: Drink, mostly. When I’m not raising the kid.
I could only stay out for about 90 minutes before I had to pick the kid up from a birthday party he was attending.
Still, it’s one of those things I think I’ll do again.
Thought of it again when I told the kid that he was done with school and that he was starting a whole new grade next year.
Him: Can you believe it?! Me: (laughing) Not really, kid. Not really.
He loves this shirt and wears it *waaaay* too often – no idea why.
Suppose I’ll always think of him as a little boy, even when he’s not one any more.
Like I said in my last entry, I think I understand my dad now more than I ever have before.
After all, all men are little boys to the parents that love them.
Imaginary Tea
I love you more than you will ever know
I love you no matter what you do
I’m gonna hold you as long as you will let me
‘Cause you’re mine, I love you
I loved you before I heard ever heard your voice
Before I even knew your name
I loved you before I saw those pretty eyes
I loved you right away
So, take it slow
Before you know it, you’ll be old and grown
Just remember that I’m always here
Hands you can hold on to
I love you
Don’t worry what anybody else will say
Don’t hurry to break that precious heart
When you try to be like somebody else
Remember I love you the way you are
So, take it slow
Before you know it, you’re gonna be old and grown
Just remember that I’m always here
Hands you can hold on to
And I love you
So, let’s climb every tree
And drink imaginary tea
And speak a language only we can understand
And I will fight back the tears
As we fly through the years
And I’ll keep you as close as I can
I love you more than you will ever know
I love you no matter what you do
And I’m gonna hold you as long as you will let me
‘Cause you’re mine, I love you
Me: What makes a proctologist decide to be a proctologist? I mean they have to look at assholes all day. Firecracker: (shrugging) I’m sure that you lawyers deal with just as many, if not more, assholes every day. Me: Fair.
I find the Firecracker pretty funny, mainly with her earnestness in life.
Because the funniest things come from a place of honesty.
There’s something refreshing about having someone that is relentlessly upbeat and positive, especially considering my recent past.
In terms of the big three buckets of health, wealth, and relationships, relationships seem to be the one that my friends talk with me about the most.
With that said, I’m not the only one whose life seems on the upswing.
Ran into a friend of mine the other day who was with someone new. Afterward, she and I chatted about it.
Me: I didn’t realize you and [your ex] broke up. Was there any particular thing? Her: (thinking) It was weird. I told him – straight-up – things like, “Could you let me know if you’re running late, “or “Could you drop me a line to make sure I got home OK?” Nothing. Ever. Me: That’s weird. Her: Yeah. Basically, that relationship was: “He knew what I wanted but he never did it.” Me: Jesus Christ, can I relate to that…
Of course, for every person whose life is getting better, there’s gotta be at least one person whose life is getting worse.
Or two – see, two friends of mine just announced that they were divorcing each other. I didn’t wanna pry but it seemed that things mainly come down to issues in communication.
Have you ever actually read the story of the Little Mermaid? The original story is…dark. Waaaaay, dark.
Essentially, the mermaid saved this prince’s life but couldn’t speak so the prince thought some other chick saved his life and married her, and she died.
The end.
Think the loneliest people in the world are the ones that aren’t actually mute but can’t communicate.
Then again, some things might be best left unsaid.
Me: Can you do me a favour? Her: Sure, what? Me: Can you walk on my back? I’ve had a rough day at the gym. Her: (laughs) Sure! Me: (10 minutes later, groaning) OMG, hurt me, call me names, make me write bad checks! Her: Umm… you…Mad Hatter! Me: (laughing hysterically) MAD HATTER?! Her: That’s all I could come up with! Now write me some bad checks!
I feel like I’m finally past my lemon days, maybe? That’s the hope, anywho.
So, here’s to some lemonade…
Location: day-drinking with her in an empty bar on 80th and Amsterdam
Mood: completely exhausted
Music: Everything’s just fine, I’ma be just fine (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
