Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

September 2020 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • The Covid recession in the U.S. is pretty bad and may be settling in for the long term. Demand for the capital goods we normally export (airplanes, weapons, airplanes that unleash weapons, etc.) is down, demand for oil and cars is down, and the service industry is on life support. Unpaid bills and debts are mounting, and eventually creditors will have to come to terms with this (nobody feels sorry for “creditors”, but what this could mean is we get a full-blown financial panic to go along with the recession in the real economy.

Most hopeful story:

  • The Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis had the courage to take aim at campaign finance corruption as a central reason for why the world is in its current mess. I hate to be partisan, folks, but right now our government is divided into responsible adults and children. The responsible adults who authored this report are the potential leaders who can lead us forward.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • If the universe is a simulation, and you wanted to crash it on purpose, you could try to create a lot of nested simulations of universes within universes until your overload whatever the operating system is. Just hope it’s backed up.

freight vehicles and urban design

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Next City has a roundup of ideas for more efficiently accommodating freight vehicles in dense cities.

  • Better, cheaper (or even free to the user) public transit, so there aren’t so many cars clogging up the streets trucks need to drive on
  • “logistics hotels” where goods from many sources can be mixed, matched, and put on smaller vehicles appropriate to city streets (this is kind of how a port works?)
  • “design infrastructure like intersections and bus lanes with interactions between freight activity and vulnerable road users, like children, in mind” (sounds good, if a bit non-specific
  • Design trucks so they just aren’t so dangerous
  • Better allocate curb space to get more deliveries out of fewer vehicles

I have a few more ideas.

  • Don’t forget some kind of temporary parking for contractors and delivery people serving urban customers. It doesn’t have to be free, but it should be reservable.
  • Don’t forget garbage trucks, unless we are going to think of a better way to deal with garbage or get rid of garbage entirely.
  • Alleys can work well for trash and deliveries, if they are designed with that purpose in mind. They can provide play space and just generally space for people to spread out the rest of the time (but NOT if they are just a bunch of garage entryways).
  • I still want my robot deliveries, both ground and air! In my city though, robots using the sidewalks for deliveries will need them to be in a better state of repair, and that won’t happen because sidewalks are technically the responsibility of homeowners, many of whom are poor and/or don’t even know the sidewalks are their responsibility. On the few streets with incompetently designed, unenforced, and unmaintained bike lanes, the robots’ wheels and gears will get all gummed up with the blood of children and old people who believed the mayor’s promises to build safe protected bike lanes like they have in Europe.
  • I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. COPY DUTCH STREET DESIGN NOW!!! Just don’t let it go to their heads, the smug bastards…

summer reading 2020

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Here’s what I read this summer (okay, full disclosure – I started in March):

  • The Stand. I suppose I decided to read The Stand because of Covid-19. Like most Stephen King books I have read (a short list consisting of The Running Man, which he wrote under a pseudonym early in his career and I didn’t actually realize was Stephen King until later, and The Shining, which I decided to read on a whim one Halloween), it wasn’t exactly what I expected, wasn’t as horrifying as I expected, and I thoroughly enjoyed it in the end. I read the extended version, clocking in at over 1200 pages, which includes information he intended to be in there from the beginning that was cut by the original publisher.
  • Futuristic Violence in Fancy Suits. Just dumb, fun escape reading, superhero stuff.
  • The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. Now, I’ve given Margaret Atwood a hard time on this blog before, not that she knows or cares. That was before I read The Handmaid’s Tale, and I take it all back. This is a sequel (actually, it sort of takes place loosely in parallel) to The Handmaid’s Tale. The Handmaid’s Tale is a special book. It’s particularly effective as an audio book, because it is supposed to be the audio testimony of a young woman of unknown fate. It is affecting, because it is something like a slave narrative or The Diary of Anne Frank, and you really identify with the character. Of course, the latter two are real while this is a work of fiction. If you haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale, you need to read it and then reflect on it for awhile before reading The Testaments, but I found The Testaments to be a powerful and affecting book as a supplement.
  • I decided that my theme this summer would be “books by Neal Stephenson”. I started with The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. I was looking for escape fiction and this one is about witches, Vikings and time travel. It is very long, and I got the idea he was just getting wound up at the end. I enjoyed the book.
  • Next in my “Summer of Stephenson” was The Diamond Age. This is a book about nanotechnology. Like many books about post-singularity technology (I’m thinking of Accelerando by Charles Stross, as good an escape fiction writer as any), I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I was expecting. It was hard to follow the plot and hard to relate to the characters. I applaud Mr. Stephenson for writing a different, creative sort of book, but it just wasn’t that fun for me. Mr. Stephenson and Mr. Stross should both talk to Vernor Vinge about how to make far future technology more relatable.
  • Last in my “Summer of Stephenson”, I’m listening to Cryptonomicon, his massive epic about World War II code breaking. It’s an interesting listen, although I tend to listen for a half hour here and there and then be ready for something else. I’m finding it’s good for passing the time on those insomniac nights.
  • Finally, I’m reading The Angle Quickest for Flight by Stephen Kotler. It sounded like a fun Dan Brown type thing, but it is turning out to be not fun for me. It’s a tough slog, but I almost never give up on a book.

In summary – Stephen King, fun, although I am not a “horror fan” per se. Vernor Vinge, fun. Anything by Charles Stross except for Accelerando, fun. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, very fun. Other books by Neal Stephenson, moderately to somewhat fun, although after binging on him for a summer I will probably take an extended break. “Fun” might not be exactly the right word for Margaret Atwood, but Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments are well written and powerful stuff you don’t want to come true. Her MaddAdam trilogy is moderately fun stuff you don’t want to come true, and come to think of it, it kind of closes the loop to where I started with The Stand.

I also watched some of the Netflix series Altered Carbon this summer. It reminded me how incredibly fun that book was, even Snow Crash fun. In fact, I would suggest Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson), Altered Carbon (Richard K. Morgan), and Rainbow’s End (Vernor Vinge) as a very fun cyberpunk trio.

ice loss following worst case predictions

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Treehugger, summarizing an article in Nature Climate Change (which you can’t read without belonging to a university library or paying a lot of money) says loss of ice in Greenland, Antarctica, and around the world is tracking the most pessimistic model results included in the most recent IPCC report.

Up until this point, global sea levels have increased mostly due to thermal expansion, which means the volume of seawater expands as it gets warmer. However in the last five years, water from melting ice sheets and mountain glaciers has become the primary cause of rising sea levels, the researchers point out.

It’s not only Antarctica and Greenland causing sea level rise. The researchers say that thousands of smaller glaciers are melting or disappearing completely.

Treehugger

I think it may be time to get away from coastlines, hot places, and dry places. But not so far north I have to deal with thawing permafrost. And I don’t want to deal with earthquakes or volcanoes. This would seem to leave limited choices.

James K. Galbraith on the coronavirus economy

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Here is how James K. Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas, explains the effects of coronavirus on the U.S. economy.

  • The global market for U.S. exports has shrunk drastically. The U.S. exports high-tech capital goods like airplanes and weapons.
  • The U.S. oil industry is pretty much shut down because hydraulic fracturing is not cost-effective at current prices, which are caused by low global demand.
  • Car sales are down because people are driving less, and their cars are going to last longer.
  • The service economy is largely shut down. He says it will not reboot quickly because many services are basic luxury goods, things people have been convinced to want but don’t necessarily need, and things that people can do at home if they really want or have too. To certain extent, people have gotten used to doing things at home, and there is also the problem that many people have lost jobs (in the service industry) and will not have extra income to spend on luxury goods.
  • The service industry business model typically depends on very high occupancy (i.e. crowding) to be viable. Businesses are starting to fail and will continue to fail. Once commercial districts start to have high vacancy, they tend not to come back quickly.
  • Unpaid bills and debts are starting to mount, and this will eventually become a problem for creditors and investors.

Here are his solutions, along with my thoughts in parentheses.

  • Redirect idle industries that export capital goods to internal goods such as public infrastructure. (Makes sense, although it’s not necessarily the same people and equipment. Retooling and retraining would be necessary.)
  • A federal jobs guarantee in industries like teaching and home health care. (Makes some sense, but it makes sense to let the private sector lead in markets that are functioning well. The trick is identifying which sectors like education represent genuine market failures.)
  • Nationalization (or the local government equivalent) of some firms and industries that can’t survive at the reduced volumes. (yuck, in general, but maybe industries where this already exists to some extent, like utilities and transportation.)
  • Domestic manufacturing (maybe, but makes sense to focus on industries where we have a competitive advantage, plus those with value for risk management, resilience, robustness – certainly food, medical equipment, etc.)
  • Just have a universal health care system like all other advanced countries. (For crying out loud, just do it now!)
  • Debt forgiveness, especially student and medical debt. This transfers some wealth from creditors to debtors. He says this will occur in either a controlled or uncontrolled way, so we might as well pick controlled. He says major financial reforms might be necessary, like turning banks into public utilities. (Sounds good to me, but can’t happen without major campaign finance reform.)

coronavirus changes to keep

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This article in Axios lists some changes brought about by the coronavirus that we might want to keep after the coronavirus.

  • not just remote work, but remote hiring and onboarding – There are now people working at the local branch of my company who I have never met in person. Conversely, it seems no more weird to work online with people anywhere in the world* who I have never met in person, than it does to work with someone local who I have never met in person. This gets us closer to the economists’ dream of a truly mobile workforce that could iron out some inequities. (* Time zones still exist, and I can tell you from working with U.S. staff while I was living in Asia, working in the middle of the night still sucks. I worked with someone in South America last year though who was only one time zone away from mine, and that worked out great. India – I love you guys but the time zone thing is just too brutal…)
  • new movies streamed – well, okay, if you’re a big movie buff… but I do see the distinction between movies and TV shows with a series of hour-long episodes slowly dissolving, and the shows tend to be higher quality. I suspect 2-hour movies that take a year or more to produce and then release may be on their way out.
  • more seamless delivery of everything – yes, but we still need street and parking design in our cities to catch up
  • telehealth and teletherapy – yes, this seems good. I’d like to see home visits make a comeback basic routine health care – no real sign of that yet, although my life insurance company did recently send a nurse to my house to check my weight and blood pressure, stick me with a needle and collect a cup of my pee. So it can be done. Here’s an idea – let’s do vaccination this way.
  • Maybe some states are realizing the internet needs to be treated like a public utility going forward. We’ll see….
  • better remote education tech – this article mentions smaller class sizes and better parent-teacher-school communication. I agree – some of what the remote model lacks could be offset by more one-on-one and small-group attention where it will do the most good.

I’d like to add timed tickets to this list. I’ve seen a few museums, parks, etc. do this in the past, but it has become much more prevalent to buy a ticket that gets you in within a certain window during the day, and this has a huge crowd control benefit. Things are just much more enjoyable when they are less crowded. I also like restaurants and stores that let you check in online, then text you when your table or customer service person is ready for you. Let’s get rid of standing in line forever!

the Oura

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The Oura is a fitness tracker, but unlike others it is a ring you wear on a single finger. See Wired article here and company website here. It seems to focus mostly on measuring your heart beat and temperature – all the time – and coming up with a variety of metrics and feedback for you based on that. The NBA and NASCAR have apparently given them to all their athletes (yes, I maintain that race car drivers are athletes, but we can continue the debate down at the corner bar when and if it reopens.)

I’m curious about fitness trackers, but if I ever invest in something I would like blood pressure and nutrition to somehow be incorporated.

Covid and automation

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Pew has an update on activities that might be automated in the near to medium term. Covid might be speeding this up – there’s not much hard evidence offered in this article, but one expert interviewed said he thinks it has been accelerated by five years. Sadly, the articles does not contain any videos of robots at work, which are always fun.

  • taking orders in restaurants – seems like a no-brainer, most of us have probably done this
  • flipping burgers – I haven’t seen this yet
  • delivering meals and towels in hotels and hospitals – The first place I saw this was a hospital in Singapore. I played a (very low speed) game of chicken with the robot. The robot won – or I won, if winning means walking away with all my limbs. It was a children’s hospital so if I lost a limb I would have had to go to a different hospital.
  • cleaning hospital rooms – I’d really like to see this one! If they can clean hospital rooms, can they clean my house?
  • welding in factories – I don’t spend much time in factories
  • meatpacking – no, I haven’t seen a robot rip a chicken open but it seems like the kind of thing that makes sense for robots, if we are all going to continue ripping open and eating animals (which I do myself, and would be a hypocrite if I said I didn’t think we should continue doing this)
  • “Jobs also could be automated for better-educated knowledge workers, including some computer programmers, medical assistants and sales professionals.” The logic here is a little tenuous – replacing travel and convention industry jobs with online meetings. I guess, but is that really the same job being automated, or is that just a job that went away? Did refrigerators “automate” the job of delivering blocks of ice to our homes? If you were the ice man (and now you no longer cometh – I couldn’t resist), I guess that distinction doesn’t matter much to you. Refrigerators do have to be designed, manufactured, delivered, maintained, repaired, and eventually recycled or disposed of, however.
  • customer service – I think this is true, although the computers aren’t necessarily doing a good job and our expectations may have just been lowered to the point where we accept this.
  • “low wage gigs in stores and restaurants” – When I was a teenager I checked out and bagged groceries. That job has been “automated” by making the customer do it themselves. So again, is eliminating customer service the equivalent of automating it, or do we just not remember what customer service was? Not that it was ever perfect.
  • “low skill jobs in mining or factories” – I don’t spend much time in mines
  • “department stores dropping off automated orders at the curb” – a couple years ago, I would have called the police if people were banging on my door and leaving things in front of my house at odd hours. Now it’s the norm.

You can see how all this could lead logically to the idea of a universal basic income. If automation is increasing the productivity of the economy as a whole, but displacing some workers, you can take a portion of new wealth created (this is called taxes) and redistribute it. Or you can set up a sovereign wealth fund and distribute dividends from it, while saving some of the money to redistribute on a future rainy day (you don’t need to do this if you can just print as much money as you want and people will accept it worldwide, but then again maybe you should be planning for a day when that will no longer be the case). Set the tax rate right and you can help everybody at least a little while maintaining the incentive to innovate. Or you can try to be more targeted and use the money for unemployment payments, education and training. This should all be a no-brainer, but the people making the profits don’t want to give up even a small share, and they have spent decades manufacturing a toxic anti-tax culture that makes this politically very hard to do.

Richard Florida’s plan for Philadelphia

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Richard Florida and another dude I hadn’t heard of (but he’s local) have a plan for post-pandemic Philadelphia, and it goes something like this:

  • Focus heavily on medical and biotech R&D and startups, where we are a major center.
  • Upgrade workforce skills to participate in this industry.
  • Local procurement policies, especially from minority businesses.
  • Do something to fill vacant store fronts.
  • Do something about poverty.
  • Raise the minimum wage.
  • Develop “concrete actionable strategies” to do these things.

This all sounds pretty good to me. It’s short on specifics of course. We need to grow the economy and create professional jobs somehow without alienating the anti-gentrification crowd. Then tax revenue could increase and just maybe you could do something about poverty. Poverty is the tough nut to crack because there may just not be enough money to go around within a single political jurisdiction, although there probably is plenty to go around in the metro area as a whole, and certainly in the state and country as a whole.

I think professional management of city services would also help. Philadelphia should be a first class international city, but in addition to the income and education inequities it is held back by a personality that is too accepting of amateurism and mediocrity, and too unwilling to look at what is working elsewhere and adapt it. This is not such a tough nut to crack, in my view. Government, businesses, educational institutions, and the public worker unions could get together and probably come up with a plan to upgrade services significantly while saving money, building skills, and creating jobs in the process. This would be a win-win-win for everyone.

bumble bee watch

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If you have some free time or are looking for an outdoor project with kids, you can take pictures of bumble bees and upload them to this website. Scientists there can help you identify them and tell you if they are rare.

Bumble bees seem to like my anise hyssop, milkweed, and sunflowers especially. I tried to take a photo of one just now but it turns out they don’t always sit still for photos. There is only so much you can do for wildlife in an urban situation, but one thing you can do is plant to help bees and butterflies, then have friendly conversations with family, friends and neighbors when they ask what the heck you are doing in your “overgrown” garden and when your “weeds” make attempts to expand beyond your borders.