Category: Life, The Universe and Everything

Remember when the president of the United States didn’t routinely sound like a petulant 3rd grader?

Yeah, me too.

This is a test, folks. You can call out utter bullshit, or you can swallow it, like you’re expected to.

It’s up to you.

I’ve been thinking about the ozone hole lately. You don’t really hear much about the ozone hole anymore, but if you were alive in the 80’s you couldn’t not hear about it.

I hadn’t thought about this particular Sword of Damocles for years, until we watched the “Fridge” episode of The Secret Genius of Modern Life the other night.

And now it won’t get out of my head.

Not the ozone hole itself, or the chlorofluorocarbons that were humanity’s contribution to the problem. I keep thinking about the research and scientific testimony in the mid-seventies that drew attention to the risk, the observations in the mid-eighties that focused us and catalyzed action, and the Montreal Protocol that coordinated a global response.

I keep thinking about the scientists, the civil servants and politicians, and members of the public who all had a part to play.

I can’t help but wonder how the same thing would go today.

If that’s not enough to keep you up at night, that’s usually the point where I find myself musing on what imminent calamity we’re currently oblivious to because we are – right now – defunding the basic research that would be our best chance to discover and understand it.

And then I come full circle and wonder how the hell we managed to dodge that bullet when the only evidence that the problem even existed was some false color imagery and scientific papers largely incomprehensible to the general public and world leaders.

And yet, we acted. Globally. And our actions made a difference. And we didn’t abandon the plan, or take our proverbial ball and go home, even when it would have been easy to.

I’ve been trying to imagine what it would take, today, to get the same outcome.

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I believe it’s even possible.

I hope I’m wrong.

Most folks reading this know I’m not on Facebook. I was, for a while. I liked that it kept me “sorta connected” to a bunch of people.

But Facebook was always frustratingly insistent on presenting content they wanted me to see, and what they wanted and what I wanted were different. By late 2017 I’d deactivated my account, and after “giving it one more go” several months later, I downloaded “my” data (go ahead, laugh) and closed the account “for good.”

These days I find myself again looking for ways to control how much toxic media I consume, and having already picked the proverbial “low hanging fruit” slightly complicates things.

Since quitting Facebook, though, what I was trying to avoid has metastasized through “normal” media, so even if I could leave Facebook again it wouldn’t solve the problem. I’m not even sure it would move the needle, honestly.

Lately, I’ve been consuming most of my news from The Financial Times and The Economist – both unabashed bastions of politically-biased perl-clutching propaganda.

And while it seems like I’m remaining “reasonably well informed” and consuming fewer fabrications and overt attempts at manipulation, I can’t say it’s making me much happier.

What it’s helped me notice is that when I do read something from the “mainstream” media – on either side – the sense of panic is palpable.

The left seem terrified about the trajectory America has set itself on. There’s always some new ranting or failing of the unhinged narcissist at the helm. And there’s his merry band of sycophants, intent on undoing decades of American influence and political soft power around the world. And all this against the backdrop of crazily pulling the trigger on the economic foot-gun ‘till it clicks. On quiet days there’s the idiot-savant, tasked with finding the massive stockpiles of weapons of mass fraud in government programs, who’s unafraid to move erratically, salute like a Nazi, and break things.

The right seem terrified that the lunatic left might manage to take back the reigns of power. And they’re sure that, if that happens, taxes, immigration, and woke-ness will all be turned back up to 11. The right is fighting to prevent conservatives (and their kids) being strapped in – eyes held open Clockwork Orange style – and made to stare at uncomfortable things, like gender fluidity (clearly a dastardly creation of the modern liberal left, ignoring it’s long history “in the closet”).

All that aside, in basically every article I find some “fact” that smells funny. And if I take the time to check, that fact is often (only) true “from a certain point of view.”

Neither side of the political spectrum has cornered the market for cherry picked facts, or has an exclusive on carefully walking the “technically correct” line. And most of us – me included – don’t have the time, focus, or discipline to be consistently skeptical. To fact check everything we’re watching or reading, even when – especially when – it agrees with our biases and preconceptions.

Seeking to disprove one’s own hypothesis is exhausting.

I remember talking with some colleagues – years ago – about how, as the body of human knowledge grows in breadth and depth (we know more about more things), our ability to evaluate the claims from someone who credibly claims to be expert in a subject we’re not has basically vanished.

It takes an expert to debunk an expert, and when we aren’t the expert we have to choose which expert we believe. We often believe the experts our parents did, or our spiritual leaders do, or our political party endorses.

Increasingly though, the Internet has made us all experts at everything. With a quick web search, or a hastily posed question to our favorite large language model, we can “know” a little bit about anything.

This is when some of you are probably remembering the first bit of the famous passage from Alexander Pope:

A little learning is a dangerous thing;

And I wonder how many of us remember the rest:

drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.

In other words, dive in deep or don’t swim at all. Keep going until you’re thoroughly informed, or stop before you start.

I remember first encountering this passage and being… unconvinced. Surely knowing something about many things must be good, mustn’t it?

More and more, I’m forced to concede that he may have had a point.

Living on opposite sides of the country didn’t offer much opportunity to get to really know my grandparents. My parents moved from the east coast – where they had both grown up – to the west coast while I was young. My dad got a job with a firm that he would ultimately work for until he retired.

There were infrequent visits, but between visits the distance was much more of a barrier, only a few decades ago, than it is now. Regular long distance (expensive) phone calls, and passing the phone around. It wasn’t the telegraph, but it sure wasn’t FaceTime.

So I didn’t know my grandparents well, but I did know things about them. My maternal grandfather had been a machinist. His wife, my grandmother, had raised a large family and was a proverbial “force of nature” to be reckoned with. I knew my paternal grandmother had worked in the county courts, and that my paternal grandfather was a watchmaker.

I have early memories of his desk – full of the specialist tools of his trade – in the office and workshop in the front room of their New Jersey home. But I was too young to be interested in “talking shop” with him.

He gifted me a watch, many years ago, and I remember him saying that to him a watch was no more or less than the quality of its movement. Everything else, he said “was just complications.” And that if you took care of a good watch, it would outlast you.

Before cell phones (and later smart phones) became ubiquitous and meant nearly everyone was carrying “a watch” in their pocket, I carried a pocket watch.

I liked that my pocket watch didn’t sit on my wrist and interfere while I was typing – something I spent (and still spend) a lot of time doing. When I started riding motorcycles, I liked that my pocket watch didn’t sit right where my riding jacket sleeve closure wanted to be.

And – if I’m honest – I liked that carrying a pocket watch was “a little odd,” and more than a little anachronistic.

When my phone started fitting in my pocket, for a while it replaced my pocket watch and was the only time-piece I carried.

I went back to carrying a pocket watch for a bit after seeing H4 at the Royal Museums on a trip to London, but it didn’t stick.

At some point, I bought a wrist watch. I don’t remember exactly when, or what prompted the purchase. Maybe Dawnise bought it for me. In any event, things have… escalated… since. These days I find myself with more watches than I have wrists to wear them on, which I think is a rough definition of a collector.

This all came to mind while I was looking at the details of a watch – its movement, really – and was stuck that it was accurate to “5-6 seconds per day.”

If you know nothing about watches, that probably means nothing.

If you do know something about watches that probably strikes you as either “pretty good,” or “pretty terrible.”

You might see it as “chronometer accuracy” or “much worse than a cheap quartz watch,” which are typically accurate to a few seconds a month.

Turns out both of these things are true, so “you’re right.”

Compared to a mechanical watch, a quartz watch is more convenient, more accurate, more reliable. Not to mention less expensive. And aside from changing a battery every year or so, they demand basically no maintenance.

Mechanical watches are something of an anachronism.

And to me there’s something fascinating, almost magical, about a mechanical watch movement. They’re delicate. Intricate. Mesmeric.

Springs, wheels, balances, escapements, all doing what they’re supposed to do, many times each second. Self-winding movements, with their semicircular rotor, are even more fascinating- reminiscent of our fascination with perpetual motion machines.

I mean, just look!

Still not impressed? Look closer…

The first mechanical watch I bought was a cheap open heart with an exhibition caseback – ‘cause even a cheap movement can be captivating to watch. I still have it, but I haven’t worn it in… forever.

Since then I’ve become more discerning about what I buy and wear. They’re something of an eclectic mix – often from small makers – the only thing they have in common is that they grabbed me.

Sadly, my grandfather died before I really “understood” watches. I sometimes wonder – as I did while writing this – what he’d think about the pieces I’ve collected.

I’ve been watching the incoming US administration flood the zone with shit mostly with my hands over my eyes, like a kid at a horror movie. The level of idiocy on display has been mind boggling, and I’m finding it impossible to imagine where this continuing for (at least) the next four years will leave us.

Dawnise and I used to say “stupidity should be painful,” and it occurs to me that maybe we should have been more… specific in our ask of the universe.

‘Cause this stupidity is painful. But it’s painful to the wrong people.

What’s really getting to me, above all the jaw-dropping stupidity, is the casual cruelty.

I can’t say I’m surprised. Groups tend to adopt and exaggerate attributes of their leadership. That’s true even when the group isn’t a group of toadies, and when the leader isn’t an unhinged narcissist. And this group is, and their leader is. And that chosen leader has been openly casually and repeatedly cruel for decades.

So this is very much what was asked for by those who asked for it.

And that’s the part I think I’m most struggling with.

That America has decided it’s ok to act like a prick.

To tell those who put themselves in harm’s way to protect others that the people who attacked them were patriots, were heroes, when those attackers were observably and objectively criminals. To jump around on stage like a ketamine addled teenager who never got past the idea that it was all about “winning.” To decide that the president is above the law.

To take actions while ignoring, or being incapable of predicting, likely consequences that will affect millions.

And I come back to the deeply depressing thought that it’s entirely possible that America has always been this way. Any marginalized group will tell you this isn’t new. There’s just an ever shifting set of scapegoats.

Still, I think something fundamental, and dangerous, changes when enough of us lean in to darker instincts. When we encourage our deamons to step out of the shadows and into the light, to stand proud. When we decide that it’s ok to openly exclude or subjugate the “other,” ignoring that we’re all an other to someone.

History shows us that over the long term these shifts are temporary. Sometimes it takes decades. Sometimes it takes generations. Sometimes it takes tipping into open conflict.

But ultimately things change.

They don’t go back to where they were, they converge to some new thing.

Until they change again.

Changes aren’t permanent, but change is.

I’ve tried writing something about the cognitive dissonance today being both the presidential inauguration and MLK Jr. day is causing me several times. I started aiming to say something profound, when that didn’t work I tried to say something constructive, and when I couldn’t manage to even say anything coherent I gave up.

Since I couldn’t think of anything new to say, I’ll just repeat myself.

Democracy is Coming

Fragile Mores

Tired of Being Angry

News outlets are all reporting on Trump nominating Robert F Kennedy as US secretary of health and human services. And these outlets typically describe RFK as a “vaccine skeptic.”

A skeptic is “a person inclined to question or doubt accepted opinions.”

Skepticism is a powerful force against groupthink. I’m a practitioner, and a fan.

Someone who questions or doubts facts demonstrable well beyond a shadow of a doubt – like that vaccination saves lives – isn’t a skeptic.

They’re just wrong.

Jung said “you are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”

So, when the gamblers and bookies do things that disagree with the pollsters, my money’s on the bookies.

Sadly, the bookies basically called the US Election weeks ago.

This morning brought resigned sadness, but not much surprise.

I read the idea, somewhere, that politics and policy affects us in two ways: by what it does to us – the liberties provided or restricted, the taxes and tariffs levied – and by what it says about us – how our sense of self is reflected and affected.

What our tribe’s politics and policies say to people – especially those outside the tribe – about who we are, what we believe, and what values we hold dear.

It’s mostly through that lens that I’m despondent about another Trump presidency. Because of what I believe the choice says about the beliefs and values of the tribe that chose him.

A tribe that I’m part of. A tribe whose decisions cause ripples in every direction, and into the future.

Electing him to lead, and to represent the US on the world stage, is a decision that I fundamentally do not understand and deeply disagree with.

I didn’t understand it the first time. We knew plenty about Trump through how he ran his businesses. He had a long history of mistreating people who worked for him. He didn’t dispute it. He was proud of it. He berated belittled and verbally attacked people who disagreed with him. He weaseled out of agreements. And he styled himself a “self-made success,” despite starting well up the ladder thanks to inherited wealth. (You may notice that Trump’s current favored sycophant suffers from the same misapprehension.)

I was confused the first time. I’m utterly incredulous the second time. We had four years to see his reprehensible character and behavior amplified by the office of the presidency. Four years of him acting like a petulant child who needed nothing more than his mommy or daddy to send him to his room until he learned to behave like an adult. Four years of him putting his immediate family into positions of authority and responsibility for which they were no better suited or prepared than he was.

And there was a veritable conga-line of close former advisors and collaborators vocally, publicly, and voluntarily shouting that he’s unfit to lead.

And yet. Here we are. At least another four years.

So now what?

Well, mostly things are the same as yesterday.

He’s a bloviating cretin who spews an incomprehensible amount of nonsense and cruelty and who has historically broken more promises than he’s kept.

I don’t expect him to change.

So it seems there’s little choice but to see which promises he tries to keep, and do what can be done in response.

He’s stacked the deck pretty strongly in his favor, so stopping him will be … hard. The Supreme Court seems unlikely to help. The media is basically why we’re in this mess in the first place, so don’t look to them for help either.

I’m honestly not sure what that leaves.

What I am sure of is that there will be people who will need help. Will need support and defence against this “new world order.”

So we’ll help. Because, what we do matters.