M— sent me this article over text message, but I became more enamored in the cover of the cookbook in the preview pic, rather than the content of the parody post.
I instantly recognized the thing in the corner of the cover as being the microwave my parents bought in 1978-1979: the Amana Radarange Touchmatic, placing this book in the early 1980’s at the latest (it was published in 1978).
Great nostalgia!
We quickly found the limits of the microwaves of the era as soon as we tried to cook eggs or bacon in them. Too bad there isn’t an equivalent problem in AI. Or, rather, actually there is a ton of them but somehow we ignore equivalent of exploding, foul-smelling eggs while allowing people to gaslight us into thinking that Sizzlean tastes the same as bacon.
For the 1-2 millenials/gen-zers who read my blog and don’t get the title, this might help. Ask a “boomer” (really GenXer) what Sizzlean tastes like… or not. I can say definitively, no amount of avocado toast can cover up the PTSD I have of that chewy mess of fat-bubbled tumors which came out the same no matter how we cooked it —though often in the microwave because with “50% less fat”, you could get away with “nuking” them. In fact, at home my mom referred to it as “microwave bacon” and not sizzlean. If Instagram or TikTok existed back then, I’m sure influencers would have made bank from Beatrice /ConAgra advertising that clever hack by doctoring up some heavily-cut video that would make the stuff appear edible. (TBH, that might be a good limit-test prompt of genAI: “make sizzlean appear appetizing to someone who has actually eaten it before.”)
Pro tip: If you want to be more hipster than hipster, next time you want someone to scoot over, say, “Move over bacon, there’s something leaner/meatier!” followed by a palms-down magical gesture that would impress even Hermione. I would do it, but at my age, the irony will be lost and it’s going to look like I’m just a boomer grandpa speaking in tongues.
My dad used to say that what my brother lacked, that I had, was “common sense.” Generative AI wasn’t around then, or he’d have had a better reference point to what the absolute zero is of common sense.
This morning Benjamin told us there was no eye in chiji. It took a while before we realized he meant the letter ”I” and not an “eye — ”no, the i with a dot in it!” After some more forensic analysis, it became obvious he has confused the letter “L” with the letter “I” and had heard me calling “Chili’s” “Chiji’s.”
A couple months ago, while exploring the various malls of Oakland, we stopped by Applebee’s and had a disappointing meal: the service and food quality were terrible, and the prices — even after living in the City for the 15+ years —weren’t going to make up for it.
Yesterday, after a hike near Mt. Diablo, due to the right combination of appetite and proximity, we finally got that opportunity.
When we got there, I was immediately struck by the logo no longer being spelled “Chiji’s” which is apparently how it ear-wormed its way into my four-year-old’s head. (The logo changeover happened 14 years ago which gives you an idea of how frequently I’ve patronized the casual sit-down dining market in the years I lived in San Francisco.)
We split an order of the Triple Dipper because of the memes and M— also introduced me to the queso dip with nachos because that and margaritas were what she would have with her girlfriend after work back when they were both just starting out in their careers and were poor. (M— has been spoiled by SF non-blended margaritas in the city so now the iconic Chili’s margaritas — made the way they like it in the ‘burbs and to hit the lower price point — are now way too sweet.) For us, even after hiking in the sun for a few hours, even that abbreviated meal was rich enough that we both skipped dinner and got our fix in for a while. (M— had to explain to Benjamin what “too rich” means in that context.)
M— mentioned this morning that Brian Niccol (now CEO of Starbucks) and Kevin Hochman worked together at Proctor & Gamble. Their turnarounds (Taco Bell, Chipotle, Starbucks and Yum Brand, Chili’s) bear a similarity that is in marked contrast to other leaders in the space, as well as CEOs in general. But that discussion is probably for another time. You can “do your own research” as the red-caps are fond of saying.
Instead of the predictions, or him being right, or the definitely-going-to-be-misinterpreted suggestions on how to mitigate it, I was struck by how level-headed and egoless Peter Berezin seems to be. Here are some examples:
A couple months before the peak he predicted US stocks would fall because of a trade-war caused recession (the recession hasn’t happened officially yet, but the rest is true). His reaction is that he could be just as easily be proven wrong tomorrow about something he analyzes.
As the market was peaking just after he made his prediction, instead of saying he was confident he was going to be proven right, he said, “You always have to question your assumptions. If you don’t, you’re not really doing your job properly.”
As to why the consensus was wrong, he had two observations: people had been wrong the other way in 2017 and they were giving Trump the (now mistaken) benefit of the doubt, and that as a strategist for a research firm, it isn’t a career-ender to make an incorrect bearish prediction that it would have been when he was an economist for a bank.
Even his predictions going forward have a light, humble touch:
He is only targeting 12% more drawdown from the high. This would effectively be just a return to historical averages. Soft-landing territory. If there is an actual crash, it’d be much worse.
He explains in a common-sense way how Trump thinks which explains how the market got here as well as why it’s unlikely to reverse course.
He points out that the traditional mitigations or reactions (“buying the dip” and “hiding in bonds”) are unlikely to work like they have in the past.
As the Oracle of Omaha has a similar disposition as Mr Berezin, I can assume even Warren Buffet is thinking he’s likely be in the red by the time the year is out, maybe not as bad as the others. For, as he famously said, “You don’t find out who’s been swimming naked until the tide goes out.”
(I must confess, I might have some schadenfreude if or when those margin calls happen. In the meantime, I need to work on becoming a better person like these two.)
At work, I mentioned my first dice I ever had were the “wrong color” because the Basic D&D set I had, had a chit card, instead of dice. I cut up the card and put them in Silo cups labeled with the die roll.
This got me down a rabbit hole on why they were they were called Holmes dice, why they were the wrong color, and the deal with chits. I found out that it was called Holmes because J Eric Holmes was tasked with slimming down OD&D rules for this set and my copy included chits because of this article explaining why.
(Note that there were two errors in the article, even though it is recounted by Jim Ward himself. First, I’m pretty sure the print runs back then were about 10,000 copies in size, not 100,000. Second, he’s off by one year as this occurred in 1979-1980, not after 1980. I’m sure of the second, because I received my Basic D&D set for Christmas in 1979 and it didn’t have “dice and a crayon.”)
So, even though I have most of my first dice set (wrong color, different manufacturer, missing 6-sider since it didn’t come with it), I decided to get a replica Holmes set that I saw on sale on Amazon which came out last year for the 50th anniversary (of D&D).
While I understood that the replica would have much better plastic than the nylon (or whatever) in the original set, I was actually disappointed in the set because of two deal-killers in my mind. First, the 20-sider die is numbered 1-20 instead of 0-9 twice. The 4-sided die had the numbers on the top facing outward instead of on the edges facing inward.
Oh well, as luck would have it, I’m cleaning up my garage which is full of my stuff from my old storage unit and I ran across my Gamma World box set which has a set of Holmes dice in it. There was an extra 20-sider in there but it was missing the 4-sider. Gamma World is odd because later TSR box sets used a percentile system (Boot Hill, Top Secret, and Gang Busters) and game with 2 10 siders in different colors (Later D&D’s came with monocular dice and a crayon.) This is because Gamma World is based on Metamorphosis Alpha, the first SciFi RPG. It’s possible I lost the 4-sider, but more likely — because I don’t remember owning a yellow 4-sider, only a red one — TSR didn’t include a 4-sider in order to include an extra 20-sider for percentile rolls.
In any case, since I’m not going to use these dice anyway, I decided to take the “modern inspired” set out and store them separately and put the 4 actual Holmes dice I do own in there.
You can see somewhere after failing to crayon-in the 6-sider I resorted to inking in the numbers. Good times!
In case you were wondering, you would roll the d20 along with a d6. If you rolled a 4-6 you would add 10 to your d20 roll. I colored in half of my extra d20 in my gamma world set which helped me identify it for percentile rolls as well as make it so I didn’t need to roll a d6.
But now he just launches into diatribes about how we’re so mean and we don’t let him do anything and we’re hateful people because we didn’t let him keep watching Bluey after the agreed upon number was watched #4yearolds
Yesterday, Benjamin, in tears, was yelling at me that mommy definitely MEANT to hit him with her purse, it was no accident, and she’s totally a meany for doing so.
But then, one hour later, I saw them on the couch together as he directed M— what they should build in their Minecraft world on the Switch.
For the last few months, most every night before bed, I ask Benjamin what his “successes” were that day. It’s a fun little ritual that devolves mostly into a time where he watches the text-to-speech write some pretty weird stuff in DayOne that I have to manually correct later. (He then demands that I text it to mommy and have Siri read back that text to us.)
Yesterday, M— put him to bed and I got this text from her:
His successes:
“I didn’t tell daddy my successes because they were all about you.
He talked about electric cars. I don’t know anything about cars, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.
Then he talked about rockets. I don’t know anything about rockets, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.
Now he talks about software. I happen to know a lot about software & Elon Musk is saying the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard anyone say, so when people say he’s a genius I figure I should stay the hell away from his cars and rockets.
(I’m around Elon Musk’s age and was also studied physics. Unlike him, I actually was in graduate school studying theoretical Condensed Matter of fluids away from equilibrium (turbulence), known colloquially as “Rocket Science.” Working in the internet as a developer so early, I ended up with a number of acquaintances who were part of that “PayPal Mafia.”)
All I have to say is, “Welcome to the party, gamers.” 😀
My four year old loves to drop the knowledge bombs. (“Don’t you mean knowledge BATH BOMBS, daddy? Haa ha!”)
Most of it is about Minecraft (facts about Enderman and TNT) or Super Mario (Dry Bones and Madame Grape) none of which I know anything about because I am culturally backward when it comes to video games (“Bath Bob-ombs, Daddy. Haa ha!”). But very once in a while I still get a peek into the deep logic that child has naturally.
My dad’s house is in the Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego: Pac Beach or PB for short. When she was alive, my mom, who had a heart condition for nearly her entire life, loved the walking along the beach in PB or falling asleep to the waves crashing in La Jolla Cove and I want to share those experiences with Benjamin. After we ate lunch, we started to heading to the beach.
“Where are we, daddy?”
“We are in Pac Beach.”
“No, we are in Pac!”
“Huh?”
“Over there is the beach, so this part must be ‘Pac.’”
(It’s hard to argue with this logic: another Benjamin knowledge bath bob-omb gets dropped on me.)
I never explained the unofficial motto of this blog.
When I started this blog 20 years ago, I wanted to have a north star guiding me as to why I was doing this at all. I searched the internet for quotes on writing and came across this gem from Edwin Schlossberg:
The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.
I finally got around to moving my Clipper Card onto my iPhone Wallet.
I used to have a problem losing my keys, wallet and/or iPhone until I read in a biography that Richard Feynman used to keep his wallet in the same pocket to prevent the same thing. That, and because they say that you should wear through your denim jeans the same way to give it “character,” meant ten years ago I adopted this system, and got rid of the FAIL of tagging all my shit with the then-very-unreliable bluetooth tracking stuff.
This is a circumlocutious way of saying that for the last decade, my cell phone is always conveniently in my right pocket while my wallet (with Clipper Card) is in my left pocket. As I’m right handed and the sensor of the BART is on the right side of the turnstile, I would have to do this weird cross-body yoga anti-pattern in order to get my bicycle onto the commute trains. I resolved to go into the office more often recently, so this was low-key bumming me out.
After jealously admiring how easily regular commuters used their mobile phone to zip through in front of me, I decided to sunset the physical card which apparently I’ve used for the last 12 years.
Also, about half the time, the reader would say that I need to see the operator because of some weird RFID interference shit with all the other crap I have stuffed in my supposedly "minimalist" wallet. WTF? Why should I tolerate this first world problem when we have the technology?
A quick google search and some weird phone-on-card jingo and now I can just put my phone on the sensor and magic shit happens. I can also recharge my card from my Apple Wallet instead of using the machine every so often, depending on how many times I had the patience to hit the “add $1 to your card” button last time I loaded it.
…
But this massive quality-of-life improvement somehow made me think about McDonald’s this morning, maybe because I didn’t have time to eat breakfast…
I noticed that dishonest people have been complaining about inflation, and some of them are using the price at McDonald’s as an indicator of this. This is probably related to the popularity of the Big Mac Index: a freakonomics-circle-jerk-bullshit idea that the price of a Big Mac is the best way to compute the cost-of-living adjustment between countries.
I’m sure the price of the Big Mac has skyrocketed post-pandemic — I, if anyone, should know this, I’m like an idiot savant of McDonald’s: so much so that a former franchise owner innundated me with McDonald’s T-shirts, sweaters, and stuff which are in my clothing rotation.
But here’s the thing, I’m 100% sure a significant factor in the price of the sandwich is the introduction of the McDonald’s App. According to conventional wisdom, I usually get ~30% "discount" in "savings" by ordering through the app either via some promotion or using points to buy something outright.
In economics, there is a distinction between "nominal" and "actual." Nominally, I’ve "saved" 30%, but I’ve probably got a 5% actual discount.
The reason is that if everyone uses the app to purchase our Big Macs — which we sometimes get for "free" when we accumulate 6000 points — McDonald’s would cover this by raising the nominal price of the Big Mac to compensate by the same amount. Fast food is pretty fucking competitive — as loyal as I’m to McDonald’s, I’m totally cool with swapping it out for a Big King at Burger King or an In-N-Out double-double — depending on my access to those and my mood. So the net price is fixed by the demand curve vs. their costs and profit margin.
Why 5%? Well not everyone is using the App every time. Some people are rushed, or casual walk-in/can’t-be-bothered-to-download it, or simply don’t have access to a smartphone and/or credit card. Those people won’t/can’t use an app. So, I’d guess that McDonald’s has inflated the nominal price of the Big Mac by 25%. Those of us using the app are getting a 5% discount; The non-app people are paying 20% more vs. the null hypothesis.
The null hypothesis is a world where the McDonald’s App either didn’t exist at all, or never got so high an adoption which basically happened because a global pandemic trained everyone to build a habit of contactless ordering and payment.
So, when seen another way, my 5% discount is subsidized by everyone who isn’t using the app paying 25% more than they should. Since most of those people don’t because they don’t have access to credit to use an app or the income to afford a smartphone — either because they are a school kid or poor — then basically the poor are subsiding the rich at McDonald’s. This is known as an effective regressive tax.
Regressive taxation is shit for our social order. But I guess it is okay since it means my burger and fries cost me an average four bits less than it would if they weren’t taxing walk-ins and the poor.
Of course, at a certain point people wise up and stop eating at McDonald’s or they will have to introduce menu items they can discount that only they would order and I wouldn’t (which would be difficult since the only thing I don’t eat on the menu is diet soda). Oh wait, they did that shit! Well now you know why they had to.
…
Why did I order just a burger and fries in the screenshot above? Look at the deal: the discount was free fries with a Big Mac order which netted me a 30% nominal savings. I was at the office and soda was free so this is how I maximized my discount. Oh, and after I picked up that order. I hit 6000 points so my next Big Mac is free.
