tag:pndpo.svbtle.com,2014:/feedPeter DePaulo2017-06-08T12:42:06-07:00Peter DePaulohttps://pndpo.svbtle.comSvbtle.comtag:pndpo.svbtle.com,2014:Post/a-letter-from-a-millennial2017-06-08T12:42:06-07:002017-06-08T12:42:06-07:00A letter from a millennial in the comments section of Quora<p><a href="https://www.quora.com/What-makes-the-United-States-a-representative-democracy/answer/Thomas-B-Walsh?srid=n5Tn">https://www.quora.com/What-makes-the-United-States-a-representative-democracy/answer/Thomas-B-Walsh?srid=n5Tn</a></p>
<p><strong>What makes the United States a representative democracy?</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p>This question gets asked weekly on Quora. I’m getting very annoyed answering it. The United States is not a representative democracy. It is a representative republic. I guess the high schools don’t teach Civics anymore. - <em>Thomas B Walsh, Author and Retired Executive</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hey Thomas, </p>
<p>Sorry that you were upset that people aren’t searching for answers more thoroughly before they post these questions. Given your vitriolic and sarcastic response, I decided to tell you my experience with what you wrote here.</p>
<p>I am an educated California resident in my mid-twenties. I have professional knowledge and experience in writing, software engineering and biochemistry. I’m not a genius, but I’m well educated; I’m certainly not an idiot. I get curious about things and try to learn as much as I can every day. I haven’t cared much at all for politics until pretty recently.</p>
<p>At the moment, I am curious specifically why the United States is a “representative democracy” over a “direct democracy”. That’s the question I’m starting with. There are a few truisms bouncing around my head, but I have a lot of specific questions about it: Was it a legacy choice? Past political footwork? A technical issue? Is it something that we could change in the future? Is it something we would want to change? Was it a choice made purposefully or was it a feasibility issue?</p>
<p>These paths of curiosity before me stem from a <strong>lack of information</strong> about the systems implemented to create our democratic republic. So I am looking for this information with excitement and deep curiosity. I can’t wait for the sensation of understanding. To me, it’s as satisfying as taking a bite from a perfectly ripe apple. But because of my ignorance on this topic, I’m going to search for the <strong>wrong things</strong>. I’m going to ask <strong>stupid sounding questions</strong> because <strong>I don’t know the right words yet</strong>. Ignorance on a topic doesn’t mean that I’m stupid and uneducated. Even if it’s something I should already know.</p>
<p>Today, when I stumbled upon the answer you wrote months ago, I didn’t feel that good, satiating feeling of learning something new about the world. </p>
<p>I felt stupid and uneducated.</p>
<p>I felt like I should remember the things that my uninterested, underdeveloped, hormonal teenage brain was taught ten years ago. And I don’t. I remember other things from high school, but not that.</p>
<p>Personally, once I’ve decide to learn something, I have a drive that is borderline neurotic. However, many of my friends and people that I’ve met younger than me are less weird. They don’t obsess on things, and I’ve seen first hand that they’ll stop looking into a topic when they run into something like this. A wall.</p>
<p>I’m almost positive that this long comment will come as a surprise. I’m guessing you wrote this on a busy day back in May and then forgot about it. I wanted you to know my experience, so you can get a sense of where this fits into a broader picture. </p>
<p>There are not a ton of views on this question, and I’m sure your response is defensible in context. It’s a nit-picky distinction to say we are de facto republic or de facto democracy when the consensus seems to be that we are both. We are a representative democratic republic. <strong>That’s not the point though.</strong></p>
<p>The point is that your answer doesn’t seem to mean much to you and it means loads to me. I can tell from your internet presence that you’re frustrated with educational institutions. <strong>Me too.</strong> Perhaps you feel let down by institutions on a whole. <strong>Me too.</strong> The frustrated sentences you wrote changed the trajectory of my thoughts in a negative direction. It’s only one answer with low visibility, but to me it represents an elephant in the room.</p>
<p>While writing this comment, I was able to go look at other questions and read articles explaining the information I was searching for. By the end of writing this, I’m not as ignorant as I was when I started. Because I was and am curious.</p>
<p>Coincidentally, you wrote an article on the <strong>same day</strong> you posted a response to this question: <a href="http://www.iscollegereallytherightchoice.com/a-generation-of-dependents/">A Generation of Dependents</a>. In my mind, you even point to the elephant in the room in your conclusion.</p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>I fear we are raising a generation of young people many of whom are never going to be financially independent. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>You <strong>fear</strong> a generation of incompetent young people. I <strong>know</strong> that my generation is curious. We care a whole lot about a lot of things. I <strong>so strongly believe</strong> in the people that are young today. There are a ton of things competing for our attention and resources. Many of those things are pitfalls. (Since you wrote a book on it, I’d bet the farm that you agree student debt is one of them.) </p>
<p>Even though there are a lot of mistakes and perpetuated misinformation that we sift through, <strong>curiosity</strong> will lead us to the truth. If we stay curious, the pitfalls and mistakes waiting for us will teach us, not leave us incapacitated. Our ignorance will be replaced by important truths.</p>
<p>Your response is one neuron in an intricate network of synaptically connected information. It’s a dead end. It’s a <strong>curiosity killer</strong>. </p>
<p>Thomas, it may not feel like your answer is a piece in this huge fabric, because it is a small piece. When you tell someone you’re annoyed because they’ve asked the wrong question, that they should already know the answer, you let them down. </p>
<p>*<em>Embarrassment at not knowing will perpetuate their ignorance. *</em></p>
<p>The spirit of the question I read was: </p>
<p><strong>What makes the United States a <em>representative</em> democracy?</strong></p>
<p>Emphasis on representative.</p>
<p>The United States is a representative democracy because we elect <strong>representatives</strong> that we are aligned with to <strong>make decisions on our behalf.</strong> To make and uphold laws that are aligned with our morals and our sense of justice.</p>
<p>This is really, really important. In that context, does it matter so much the technical differences between the republic aspects of the United States and the democratic? We the people elect representatives.</p>
<p>I’ve been to other countries, and I love the place I live. I’m so happy that we are fighting for important things, and right now it feels we are on a precipice. Things aren’t great, but people my age are working hard to make them better. People are often wrong and misguided, but I will take that over annoyed apathy any day. </p>
<p>It’s not us and them, it’s just Us. And curiosity leads Us to the truth, but as soon as we feel bad about a lack of knowledge, we stop looking. Please don’t let your generation give up on mine. I won’t let mine give up on the world. </p>
<p>Sincerely,</p>
<p>Peter</p>
tag:pndpo.svbtle.com,2014:Post/our-mortal-coils2016-07-13T18:07:44-07:002016-07-13T18:07:44-07:00Our Mortal Coils<p><em>Thank you…for gracing my life with your lovely presence, for adding the sweet measure of your soul to my existence</em> - Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come</p>
<p><em>We all gonna die, we bleed from similar veins.</em> - Tupac</p>
<p>This one is about mortality.</p>
<p>A chilling thought crosses my mind from time to time: that the present is simply a recording for an older, fatter version of myself to replay. It forces me to consider the flimsiness of the present. And begs me to start taking in the granular details of life at high resolution.</p>
<p>The smells. </p>
<p>The sounds.</p>
<p>The feels.</p>
<p>I get emotional in that space and have to work to stay on top of whatever’s in front of me. The stuff that’s supposed to be important, but seems less than so. It’s hard. If you ever talk to me and I seem distracted, that’s one of the things I’m thinking about. Staring at a terrifyingly gorgeous situation. Trying to both absorb it now and remember it in the future. A deer in the headlights. We’re not quite equipped for the weight of what our imaginations can conjure.</p>
<p>There is a blurry version of a day in my recent memory. An experience I was both honored and nervous to attend. I don’t want to dishonor the dead by accidentally saying too much. I’d hate to break a social contract that I don’t understand. So I must treat this with care and tenderness. I can say that it was a funeral. It was a funeral that I was late to. And it was a buddhist funeral.</p>
<p>There were some crucial moments that engraved themselves into me. Stitching now a part of my fabric. Threads that I’ll eventually take for granted. They’ll be there but I’ll forget from time to time. Moments that were weaved together like a grim symphony, a shining moonrise testament to our raw humanity. One was epiphany, one was a bit abstract, but the first was looking at a dead body. </p>
<p><strong>The dead body</strong></p>
<p>I’d never seen a dead person before. It’s something I have probably lied about to avoid a conversation about looking at dead bodies, but I hadn’t seen one up to that point. There are few moments more emotionally poignant than a funeral. </p>
<p>Funerals are pointed and structured. Where mourning can happen in a less chaotic fashion than our angry biology would ask of us. And in that heavy air I tried not to look at the open casket. But I was somehow drawn to it against my will. Around an ornate shrine of dedication. Red and gold, with pictures and food.</p>
<p>But it was exactly that to me: an uninhabited home, well worn. Lived in for many years and now abandoned. The person I had known was gone. And that person had a very large impact on my life. She had told me my future.</p>
<p><strong>The prophecy</strong></p>
<p>Several years prior… An occasion that I’ll drink for is one close friend’s birthday party. It had become a tradition since college. One fantastic feature of each of these birthdays was Grandma. She didn’t speak a word of English, and my Chinese has always teetered on poor enough to just-get-the-gist and nod. </p>
<p>You’d think that a party that involved a grandmother might be tame, but she was the progenitor of most of my debauchery. It is impossible to turn down a shot from a very respectable old woman who just fed you food - a lot of which she grew herself. And fed us she did. Everyone remembers the food. I daydream about it from time to time.</p>
<p>There is an unnamed concept I would use to describe a set of memories like this. Those memories that happened in one place under one singular circumstance on more than one occasion. They feel like a single large instant where only the highlights distinguish them individually. To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t tell you what year or which birthday my future was foretold to me. The memory fits into a category of it’s own.</p>
<p>These parties would get crazy. Most everyone that came to the house would drink just a little too much. There was dancing and laughing and cajoling. I was wandering from room to room, probably looking for more food. Grandma, birthday girl and a friend were solemnly speaking in a corner of the kitchen.</p>
<p>I hovered on the fringe of the conversation to find out what was so serious amidst the music and disorderly fun. Then she looked at me and the party melted away. In a moment stolen from a tacky black and white film, Grandma grabbed me by the arm and pulled me in front of her. She stared into my eyes with ferocious focus and took hold of my ear, catching me completely off guard. </p>
<p>Then she shook her head. </p>
<p>She spoke fast and quieted Taiwanese dialect to me. I only caught a few words and asked my friend to translate. The fortune was strangely catered to my personality, strangely personal from someone who didn’t know me well and strangely delivered through a barrier of language. It was a fortune of almost-success and missed opportunities.</p>
<p>I’d bet that explanations are percolating to your tongue; You can spare yourself the mental summersaults. I’ve rationalized the moment at least a hundred different ways that don’t prevent it from messing with my head.</p>
<p>Nothing is or isn’t, but that moment felt so important. As if truly foreshadowing an event that is yet to come. Perhaps a self fulfilling prophecy. But that is the woman with so much life in her to share. With fierce sentiments, a strong demeanor, and an untouchable will.</p>
<p>In the present, she was not lying before me. Her painted, taut skin taught me what “done up like a corpse” means viscerally. And it was an icy plunge to behold in a chapel with the smells of grief and silent prayers carrying the tune. Chanting of monks drifted in from outside. In a flash, it was time for a procession.</p>
<p><strong>The epiphany</strong></p>
<p>We uninitiated stumbled over ourselves, confused as to where to go and what to do. Many attendees of those birthdays were present. Cleaving together in solidarity to ease our absolutely ignorant helplessness. There were miscommunications about who would follow who. And a car needed to get gas. Logistical nuances defy even death. We were driving to the cemetery when a thought dawned on me. </p>
<p>I looked at my girlfriend and inquired:</p>
<p>“What do you do for a funeral?”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“What do you do with dead bodies?”</p>
<p>“We wash them. The family has to wash them.”</p>
<p>“So if you were to die and we were a family…”</p>
<p>“You’d have to wash my body.”</p>
<p>“Jesus Christ…” </p>
<p>I sat with the visual of each my favorite people lying in front of me. Lifeless. Some ceremonial sponge in my hand and my soul cringed. I realized that we all have these deep seated beliefs that don’t surface but for a few major events in our lives. We probably pretend that they aren’t that important because we don’t understand how important they are to us. They are subterraneous volcanoes erupt without our consent.</p>
<p>We flip out when people break our made up rules, and can’t even grasp why we’ve lost it. I imagined the human race as a stack of chimps. Silly looking animals pawing around a jungle forest. Taking themselves very seriously as they traded blows over mates and food.</p>
<p><strong>The abstract</strong></p>
<p>Rows of the deceased greeted us as we drove over hills filled with droves of dead. Placards glared as we passed, shouting their years. 1993 to 2006; 1921 to 2011; 1900 to 1987. Is there an alumni association that welcomes us from the graduation from life? Do they hit up the recently dead with requests for funding for their next cohort?</p>
<p>The procession had beat us to the burial site by a few minutes, but the Four Pillars of Destiny (生辰八字 or more commonly referred to as the Bazi, which confusingly translates to ‘eight characters’) had decided a very specific time long ago; 10:20AM on the point. We walked up the steep and perfect grass to the ceremony.</p>
<p>A canopy, plastic chairs, a manmade promontory on a hill. And we tried not to step on the graves. They were plenty. Nearby, a bulldozer idled. A steel lever on wheels waited in the wings with a gigantic cement lid. A gas powered golf cart with tools and a hose queued behind that in turn. It struck me as strange that so much manual labor went into the whole affair.</p>
<p>And so it began. There was incense, chanting and bowing. Crying was stifled for the stern portions of the ceremony. There wasn’t a time for anyone to “say a few words.” Just a long series of sung prayers and the bells of monks in robes.</p>
<p>As the time became perfect, the immense lid was lifted and glued onto the sarcophagus. They lowered the vessel into a deep and rectangular hole in the ground. It felt like I had turned around and landed on a job site. Out of nowhere there were dirt compactors and sod layers. They operated sterilely. Machines pulled mountains of earth to fill the void.</p>
<p>I gazed at the people in plastic chairs with little plastic water bottles. The monks in bright colors. The spiritual master who dictated how the ceremony proceeded. The girl whose grandmother had died, who was falling apart. The gardeners, tending the hills of the dead. The strangers who were paying respects to the previously buried far off in the distance. The father, the son and the holy shit we’re all destined for death. </p>
<p>I was struck by the grandeur and began to cry. </p>
<p>I wanted hugs and warmth. I wanted sake and spicy shrimp. I wanted another conversation with grandma asking her what exactly she had meant. One more chance to know some secret that she had gained over her long and challenging years.</p>
<p>I was in sphere of cultural cross wiring. Humans clutching at their traditions when faced with the goodbye wave of mortality. This is life. Hinduism on the left, new age on the right, Islam somewhere in the middle at a Buddhist funeral. One gift of globalization. It’s these tears that we share that make it real.</p>
<p>We each carry a circle with us in our mindless day to day. It’s rare that these circles really ever touch or overlap. What do the ditch diggers at a mortuary feel when they attend a funeral for their loved ones? Death reminds us of the rules and then reminds us again that the rules are made up. I was once asked in a job interview what I think about diversity, now I have a good answer 6 years later.</p>
<p>The incense was put out. We walked down the hill without looking back.</p>
tag:pndpo.svbtle.com,2014:Post/our-social-suicide2016-07-03T17:57:39-07:002016-07-03T17:57:39-07:00Our Social Suicide<p><em>If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.</em> - Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past</p>
<p><em>Don’t let your dreams be dreams.</em> - Shia LeBouf, reading Nike ads</p>
<p>Who the fuck are you?</p>
<p>Hello. I am Peter DePaulo. Peter Nathaniel DePaulo. I’ve got a lot of nicknames.</p>
<p>I’m lucky to be here. Both of my parents had compelling reasons not to exist before my birth. They had opposite life paths that brought them equal measures of pain. The kind of suffering that makes a person find solace in some inelastic resource; like alcohol. And thus, unsurprisingly they became alcoholics. My half brother and sister and my ‘full-blood’ brother (all of them I size up as more than full people - they are cherished) experienced the immediate backlash of alcoholism; the chaotic discordance that effuses from people making irrational decisions.</p>
<p>I did not. </p>
<p>The highlight reel rolled through stories of first-hand eye witnesses. The old scars and the fresh tears born of stale moments. It’s been the smoke cloud after the atomic bomb. The effects of the fallout on my family and it’s extensions. I’ve never really known how severe the blast was.</p>
<p>It’s nice to meet you. </p>
<p>I am the type of person who gets off on quoting Fyodor Dostoevsky in times like these, after letting the computer spell his name. <em>All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.</em> I’m the kinda pretentious, condescending snob who tells you with glee that <em>actually</em> that quote was from Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina. Even though I have never read it. It’s in my brain because of a book about starting companies by Peter Thiel. The whole concoction is laugh-lout-loud funny to me. </p>
<p>Because if you were here, I’d be <strong>winking</strong> at you. It’s not that I am putting one over on you, this is a dance between you and me. There’s song in my soul that plays in a chaotic, repetitive pattern without ever actually repeating. You’ve got one too. Our lives are the dance that the music compels us to groove to. You do you. I’ll do me.</p>
<p>I was born a tyrant. A precocious emperor who commanded attention. Small, fast, and easy to miss. But you could not ignore me. This has been a theme for all of my life. The need to be heard. This universal human need bared back by the loving fangs of our peers. I craved an audience, and still do. You have always been the most important thing to me. </p>
<p>You reader, are my audience. Whoever you may be: I really hold in the highest regard. I imagine you to be smart and elegant. Smart enough to get my jokes and smarter still to see how I over-thought them; rewriting this sentence several times to make it perfect for you. And still missing the mark. </p>
<p>I appreciate that you recognize my purposeful bending of the English language to fit my oratative (rhymes with authoritative) style of writing. You put up with my abuse of grammar. You can relate to the twang of Mark Twain; the futuristic, hopeful echoes of David Mitchell; the self-indulgence and ill-advised F. Scott Fitzgerald; and the just-fucking-do-it from Stephen King.</p>
<p>You are the type of gal or guy who watches a movie and appreciates it both in earnest and ironically at the same time. This above all: you are down to earth. You keep it real. You are one who lives in a paradox. And I am here to tell you that we live in that paradox together.</p>
<p>My childhood reads like the nemesis of a prodigy. As <em>parvus tyrannum</em>, I did terrible little things.</p>
<p>At two, a circuit made of wire found itself plunged into a socket. The explosion of the attached lightbulb blew the breaker of the house to my great delight. </p>
<p>At three, on the advice of my brother I scaled the back of the chair my long-suffering mother was reading in, and peed on her head. I was justifiably punished.</p>
<p>At four, in Tennessee, threats of real corporal punishment for less were projected into minds of the youth by racist adults. A teacher’s book met the force of my head when I threw an eraser at a female classmate.</p>
<p>At five, back in California, a fire in a broom closet.</p>
<p>Around my sixth birthday was my first curse word. A fit of red, painful rage exploded into the air directed at my offending oldest brother. At the time, “bitch-bug” was the best thing that young mind could offer. Kindergarten couldn’t hold me in, so they held me back. “Too rambunctious”. </p>
<p>Skip to nine and ten, “Are you a dummy?” questioned my third and fourth grade teacher. Moved from the charter school that proffered ‘conjoined years’ and ‘learn by doing’ to a public school that featured ‘pink slips’ and ‘permanent records.’</p>
<p>A quick tangent.<br>
There were two remarkable individuals at that charter school. Erica, and Johnny. Erica and Johnny are brother and sister. You could tell even then that they were wicked smart. They both ended up going to Stanford if that means anything to you. Although, Stanford optimizes for moderate risk investments in legacies, not happiness. </p>
<p>The most recent interaction with Johnny was an extrapolation of one of my more awkward childhood memories. Through happenstance, their family brought me along to Michael Jackson’s ranch before it shut down. The ranch used to have a bunch of fair-esque roller coasters that one could ride for free. </p>
<p>The embarrassing memory: It was Johnny, Erica, another guy and me in a ferris wheel. At the very top, I yelled down at their dad “You should join us up here Mr. Redacted” but said the wrong name. Johnny angrily corrected me. </p>
<p>That was what I messaged Johnny recently, saying “there is a part of me that’s still embarrassed about that haha.” For some reason the weight of that exchange sunk into that little boy on the top of that ferris wheel. Awkwardness wielded is a superpower. I don’t know what Erica and Johnny are doing now, but think about them from time to time. I hope they are doing great.</p>
<p>Fifth grade, Mrs. Williams, a diabetic who you could bribe with Krispy Kreme donuts, told me “you’re not going to pull the wool over my eyes.” I read a book about segregation and found a deep, righteous anger in the core of my bones. Freedom is a right for everyone. It still makes me tear up. That year, music made it’s debut in my life.</p>
<p>Sixth grade, “You’re not going to ruin my retirement year!” Mrs. Burke had hawk-like features and owlish glasses. She thought that “art” was transposing a small picture of garfield into a large picture of garfield. We used a grid to help with the translation. Every single recess was dispensed writing misdeeds and daily offenses on a piece of paper. Freedom began to whisper in my ears. This was a turning point.</p>
<p>We were presented California’s educational requirements for sixth grade. On happenstance, those for seventh grade were on the back of the sheet. The bar was set very low, which says a lot about American education. Thus, I persisted every morning and night for more than a month making a case to my tired, lovely mother. If she would only enroll me in an independent study program, sixth and seventh could be finished in a year. Freedom was screaming at me. This was survival. </p>
<p>The case was won. Wings burst from back and I took flight. It was a year of exploration and real learning. The acquisition of knowledge was no longer bound by garfield in a grid. Dissected plants told the secrets of botany, books on samurai sternly lectured on feudal Japan. I played shogun for the show-and-tell hosted by the independent study program; elaborate hakama and all. I studied Egyptian hieroglyphics. More Shakespeare implanted itself in my mind. Proust and Pushkin argued with each other in my dreams.</p>
<p>The only cost of this liberty was going in and taking tests to prove that television was not my primary professor. State standardized tests were administered at an adult night school. During breaks over orange juice and crackers, I pretended to read near other students; the deeply captivating older girls with leopard print tights talked about smoking cigarettes. Anything different. Anything new. I also learned to play the saxophone like a mother fucker.</p>
<p>It may have been the wrong choice when given the opportunity to reintegrate into the public school system as an eighth grader. </p>
<p>The formative years of our human adolescence are almost unanimously agreed to be those within the confines of the middle school penitentiary. I was short, fat, loud and marked. I did not fit into any single group. I loved with my whole, vulnerable, fat little heart. I tried so, so hard to just coalesce into a cohort. They say that when you’re going through hell… you should keep going.</p>
<p>A quick tangent.<br>
There was a best friend growing up. His name is Will. We are Facebook friends now and I’d grab a coffee with him if he invited me. I would invite him too, but neither of us will ever find the time. We were thick as thieves before our ages hit the double digits. We ran around covered in mud and the joys of a carefree youth in the exurbs. We got bitten by bugs, threw rocks, dirt clods and lemons. We swung from tire swings, and ran from his neighbor’s pet pig. </p>
<p>We watched Star Wars: Episode One in the theaters together. We boogie boarded in the summers. We played legos after school in the winters. I ate yellow cake with chocolate frosting with his family during birthdays. I still remember the distinct taste of his mother’s homemade frosting. There were animals, we were animals. We shared a sunny childhood.</p>
<p>Still in eighth grade. Will went to the middle school that was target of reintegration. We had diverged somehow. I don’t remember now why. The blanks in my memory are filled with “I chose the nerd archetype and he played sports”, but that is an artificial amalgam of what really happened. And the truth is lost in the grayscale of the past. Suffice it to say Will was popular and athletic.</p>
<p>I didn’t get “it.” There was a brief period of time spent orbiting the clique that occupied the small patch of green in the blacktop at that middle school. It was obvious that I didn’t fit in the same way my shirts weren’t a fit on me: too baggy to hide the folds of skin I was embarrassed to have. So a young voyeur watched them engage, vying for power and flirting with each other. Unaware of their interactions. It was crashing sound in my mind when I realized my dance moves were fodder for jokes, rather than actually being impressive. Being humored, patronized and digested later is far worse than honest rejection.</p>
<p>I was ejected. Every day was a fountain of creative torment and earned nicknames. I can’t remember if I actually had “man boobs,” but I hunched with the weight of the reminders that I did. My body met punches and kicks. A locker slammed itself into my head. My brow made friends with a hockey stick and a suture needle. I was disliked, or an unwilling scapegoat for teen angst. My imagination gave me the power to fight back, but I was teased when it possessed my body into made-up karate moves. </p>
<p>At thirteen, in eighth grade expression of poetry was more rewarding than its consumption. Proust had given up on me, and Pushkin’s cloudy sentiments condemned me. I learned more shakespeare. I played more music. I walked between the hard lines of reality, and the fantasy I escaped to. I made claymation and soldered robots. I ate too much carl’s junior. I listened to The Shins. I tried to kill myself.</p>
<p>Another quick tangent.<br>
My dad has always been a gun nut. He taught me how to dismantle, clean and re-mantle rifles and pistols at seven. I learned to load cartridges around that age as well (‘bullets’ are just the projectile that goes into a ‘cartridge case’). I was gifted a twenty-two caliber rifle around ten. I got a Remington 270 hunting rifle at twelve. It was a lot of fun, though maybe it doesn’t fit into the future of California. He also told me to protect the house when he was gone and gave me the code to the gun safe when I was twelve.</p>
<p>Still eighth grade. My sweaty, fat, little heart had been beaten down by all the insecure kids. And I didn’t have the constitution of a revolutionary. They say that baby rattle snakes deliver more venom than the adults, and that is doubly true for <em>homo sapiens</em>. Higher doses of violence, higher doses of ridicule. The strings that held me up were cut and I came tumbling down into the first pit of despair that I had ever experienced. It felt like there was no one. Empty and dysfunctional, I just watched other people. </p>
<p>My fragile wings were torn to shreds.</p>
<p>It was a sunny day and a particularly nasty fight, which my mom left in a storm. I was alone in so many ways. The gun safe opened to hands that had only just learned to work a combo lock. A Beretta 9mm had already been decided. A replica version that shot little plastic BBs was nestled in the desk in my room, so it seemed poetically apt. The real one was heavier. I pulled it into my adolescent hands and fiddled with the safety, touched the coarse handgrip, it felt so real. It was so real. It was surreal. I eyed the necessary cartridges and closed the safe to “handle my affairs.” I climbed under a blanket in the living room for final considerations. A car was rolling into the driveway.</p>
<p>My mom had come back. She asked me what I was doing facedown under the blanket and I responded honestly. Long talk. Emotional. Tears. Didn’t go to school for a few days. </p>
<p>Okay, so I didn’t try to kill myself. I contemplated killing myself. Everyone has teen angst, right? I made a choice that year, sitting in the dark looking at a Python IDE learning to program. I would learn people instead of computers. I would never let them crush me like that again.</p>
<p>Fourteen, First year of high school. Still fat. I was in the marching band. That’s a winning combo with the ladies. I started learning to breakdance. I started losing weight. I had gotten used to bullies and rejection. I started my “social experiments”. It was input-output: with no gut feeling for what people liked or what they disliked. An alien learning to act human. In hindsight, this gave me the distinct advantage of not just intuiting social interactions, but understanding the honesty beneath them. </p>
<p>Fifteen, I was saved. Not my soul - that would come later. Mrs. Swanson, my English teacher shook me and asked “Why aren’t you in theater?” Without an answer I auditioned for theater. I began to blossom. I read books about body language. I read books about “picking up chicks.” I read books about hypnosis. I read books about physics and King Arthur. I lost more weight from breakdancing. I just barely started growing taller too. I got the lead roles in the high school plays. Life started to be fun again. First girlfriend, first kiss; I missed her lips. Awkward like sword without a handle.</p>
<p>Sixteen, Hallelujah I found Jesus (I would lose him again later). I was wearing dress shirts to school and occasionally lab coats. The best way to heal the world was to become a doctor. High school was stifling. I once again spread my wings and flew through a loophole. Junior college classes served doubly as high school and college credits. This allowed me to take the minimum four periods of classes at the high school and still count as a full time student. </p>
<p>The best part? Theater was technically two periods after school. Thanks to whoever established that precedence, I strolled in at lunch for ceramics and math. Then dove into the words and worlds of playwrights of the past till about 4:30. </p>
<p>The college classes were better than high school. They were online, so people couldn’t see my looming five-foot-two presence. And the teachers weren’t trained to be prison guards. I graduated a year early with a year and half of college credits. I got caught buying weed, but that’s a story for another time. Sharp like a sword without a handle.</p>
<p>Seventeen, the amphibious year. I wasn’t quite a high school senior and I wasn’t quite a college freshman. I was confident. A junior college is a mixing pot. All these four-year universities claim to have what a lot of JCs humbly offer: a good education and a diverse student body. Real people who had gone out and done real things. I met real estate brokers, and artists. I met stoners and oddballs. I met people with kids that were coming back to school. I met optimistic, hard-working and dedicated individuals. They laughed with rather than at me. We rooted each other on. I learned to play the bass guitar like a mother fucker.</p>
<p>Eighteen to twenty-ish. “College”. I started my second freshman year as junior on paper. I met a lot of whiny, entitled, sheltered kids. The premedical students mostly had no heart. There was little solidarity, and less mutual cheering. Thankfully, there were more marvelous people than those who were listless. Do what it takes to hold on to the marvelous ones.</p>
<p>Let’s not get into the classic college experience. You can get that anywhere. I made lifelong friends here. I fell in love. I dyed my hair. I had a mohawk. I bought a motorcycle. I played guitar. I got depressed. I came out of it. I got drunk and smoked weed. I ditched classes, I went to others. I learned to speak mandarin.</p>
<p>I decided being a doctor wasn’t impactful enough. Medicine as an institution is severely broken. The doctors at the hospital I volunteered for were mechanics, not healers. </p>
<p>I never stopped watching people and the rules I’d learned hadn’t changed. I started writing them down. I iterated through several conceptual professions, trying different flavors of Peter.</p>
<p>A quick tangent<br>
There is an idea that I’ll call the universal conservation of behavior. It goes: the social patterns children follow are conserved into adulthood; these specific patterns are additionally conserved across cultures. There are more formalities and layers of sophistication, but we don’t change much in what we need from one another. This is easy to understand and easy to forget. One of the many reasons people are so intriguing. A silver thread drawing things together.</p>
<p>In my last year of college, twenty-one and up. I started a project with my roommate. The idea was simple enough: an app that allowed students to post and share digital flyers. We got some interest and had a fun name: Campulus. We found another company that was further along in the process that had received funding so we emailed them. Long story short we ended up working for them in the bay area. </p>
<p>That company was inducted into an “accelerator” which is just a bunch of high strung people getting together, drinking coffee, and talking about how much work they have to do. I got a lot out of it. I met really fascinating characters with phenomenal track records. I spent a lot of time at Stanford. I also took graduate classes online in environmental science at a different school. I started programming. I broke into tech in the same way a busboy working on a screenplay has made it to Hollywood.</p>
<p>Now, just shy twenty-five. Several projects later. A survey of energy in coastal Nicaragua. More depression. More joy. A broken and mended heart. And a desk job programming meaningless online software. Code is overrated, and sure, we’re probably in a ‘technology bubble.’ But it’s my vehicle of choice for the time being. </p>
<p>People are people. Friends are friends, and sometimes they’re not. Looking out into the world, I can’t help but feel destined for greatness and doomed to defeat. I am a slave to capitalism. An emperor waiting to happen. A pharaoh of self, driving the fat little guy inside of him to try to build the pyramids. </p>
<p>All I know is that I feel confined. I’m sure you know what I mean. The call of freedom beats in me, the music of my soul crescendos and I feel my wings beginning to tingle once again. </p>
<p>Can you feel it?</p>
tag:pndpo.svbtle.com,2014:Post/how-to-survive-in-the-promoted-content-age2016-05-14T23:19:15-07:002016-05-14T23:19:15-07:00How to survive in the promoted content age<p><img src="https://landerapp.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/data-driven-content-marketing-750x346.png" alt="Terrible stock photos are love" title="Why does this picture even exist?"></p>
<p>While reading blog posts from various sources, I noticed something uncanny: there were very few that explored a concept without linking to other posts, asking for a subscription, or plugging some product.</p>
<p>It’s because most blog posts are secretly just “content marketing” trying to get you to do something wherever the blog post is hosted. Somewhere in the past, “ideas” seem to have been replaced by “content.” If you have heard this word, you might have trouble pinning down exactly what it means. What’s the difference between content and ideas?</p>
<p>Here’s how I distinguish the two. Put simply, content is a vector and an idea is a scalar. <em>If those are new or foggy words to you, it’s every nerd’s dream to tell you a scalar is a value and a vector is a value (called magnitude) with a direction attached. The classic example comes from physics: velocity is a vector and speed is a scalar.</em> Similarly, <strong>content</strong> contains the idea (value) AND a purpose (direction), while <strong>an idea</strong> by itself can exist on it’s own. It’s not a perfect distinction but it’s pretty useful: <strong>content wants something from you.</strong></p>
<p><img src="http://www.statisticshowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/scalar-vs-vector.png" alt="Vector vs scalar" title="I stole this"></p>
<p>Outside of very obvious promoted content with brand names written all over it, try to pay attention to the stuff that you consume online. Often at the end of an article there will be some “call to action,” which is a term marketing folks coined for when someone asks you do something. Something like: “Hey! If you liked the article, drop your email over here so I can send you more of them!”</p>
<p>For me, I find it to be a turn off. Even if I liked the ideas of the article, anything promoted feels cheapened.</p>
<p>There is something dirty to me about content over ideas. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it is that the more we “share” on the internet, the less bandwidth we have to actually share in the exploration of an interesting idea. Or perhaps it’s that we aren’t upfront with our motives for why the article exists in the first place. </p>
<p><img src="http://fracklemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Content-Marketing.jpg" alt="Terrible stock photos are life" title="Lowercase i is more convincing"></p>
<p>Wishing for things that don’t exist is a waste of time, but I’m the type of person that really likes to explore ideas for the sake of exploring them. I suppose what I wish for more people to remain curious, and I would hope the word is becoming a less transactional place rather than more. </p>
<p>I imagine the logical extreme of content is just perfectly manipulating people to give you resources without having to do anything. I would like to live in a world where we can share ideas without expecting anything in return. It seems that the emphasis on content to get people to do things is diluting the pool of ideas that are maybe more interesting or valuable by themselves.</p>
<p><strong>Life pro tip</strong>: skip to the end of a post and then you’ll usually find the expected price of reading it.</p>
<p>Hey! If you liked this article, you should follow me on twitter, subscribe to read everything I post, write me a letter telling me I’m great and subscribe to my YouTube channel because I might upload something one day. Actually, just PayPal me five dollars.</p>
<p><img src="http://media.istockphoto.com/photos/businessman-with-money-picture-id497828228?k=6&m=497828228&s=170667a&w=0&h=mm3QRiGj1v0joebZbiWzdQspu18ZUq7iQUvwnTnfK5E=" alt="Terrible stock photos are Shrek" title="Just.. why? Why make this stock photo?"></p>
<p>NOTE: Shout out to the internet for providing me with stock photos that I have shamelessly stolen.</p>
tag:pndpo.svbtle.com,2014:Post/what-we-tell-others2015-05-13T23:11:12-07:002015-05-13T23:11:12-07:00What we tell others<p>Dedicated to xiao mi mi</p>
<p>The term “ivory tower” describes a kind of academic and elite point of view, represented by a disconnect from the practical world. Some might say, for example, a tenured philosophy professor would be in an ivory tower because her or his day-to-day doesn’t truly reflect the world outside of that bubble. Depressing ideas from dead writers can’t really be turned into wheat, so to speak.</p>
<p>In a conversation with a close friend (we’ll call her Mia), this very term came up. Mia was told by (let’s call him Cham) that based on the way she speaks and reasons, she comes off as if she is in an ivory tower; effusing theoretically sound, but perhaps realistically detached ideas. Knowing her well, I initially reacted to the concept in defense. But considering the perspective of meeting her in the last year or so, I can understand where Cham is coming from.</p>
<p>The problem is not in the realm of identity, but in the nature of context. In the hopes of being clear, I’ll define context as the set of all circumstances that describe a situation. If life is a play, context is the scene. Context is set by every piece of information that you take in.</p>
<p>My contextual understanding of Mia is framed around an early college experience, with fiercely opinionated conversations. There were a ton of shared milestones, and I feel like I’m close enough to know the “real” version of her. But I don’t. I only know her in my context, and I am attached to that so I bias everything around it.</p>
<p>There is only so much you can relay in a conversation[1]. And within any given conversation you are going to act differently with different people. A very easy and explicit example is in a work interview. Even though nobody acts like they do in an interview all the time (unless they are psychopaths), both the interviewer and and interviewee engage in a social contract that includes jumping through hoops and thinking “Hmm… impressive” or “Oh shit, I hope they think I’m impressive.”</p>
<p>In every conversation there is a lot going on besides the transcript of raw words passing back and forth between two or more people. Only 10% of the conversation is verbal[2]. I don’t know of many umbrella terms for nonverbal transactions, but I like the term “meta information.” I’m sure there is better purpose for this term, but here I mean every single thing that happens in an interchange outside of words organized with grammar.</p>
<p>Meta information includes timbre and tone of voice, it includes the sweat you smell in-person and yes, it includes body language. There are a myriad of points that could be considered meta information. The key elements here are ones that you can manipulate.</p>
<p>Back to the job interview. Many are aware of the “right” things to do for (most) job interviews: fluff your résumé up before you apply, dress business casual, maybe practice with a friend for a particularly difficult one. People find it completely okay to consciously manipulate their persona for one single context. We do this in personal interchanges as well, it’s just not conscious.</p>
<p>When Cham talks to Mia, they both enter a shared context. All the meta information they send to and fro encapsulates that context. Their voices, body language, gestures, tone and speed of vocalizations coalesce into an orchestra of context defined by meta information and the conversations itself. Cham knows all that about Mia, and has come to logically sound conclusions in that very specific context.</p>
<p>If Mia wanted to change Cham’s mind on the situation, she could slowly introduce evidence contrary to his “ivory tower” claim. It might be manipulative to do so solely with meta information. In some ways, it’s more honest to modify the meta information rather than go into a detailed counter-argument that might be flavored by personal bias.</p>
<p>So what is the best way to change the meta information that you send? I’ll give my answers in my next post.</p>
<p>Notes:<br>
[1] Or really, any number of conversations. I imagine if we sat with a stopwatch to measure every minute spent in each relationship we have, the numbers would be lower than our estimates. A year is only 8,760 hours. If we’re being generous and say that we average 7 hours a night of sleep, the total waking hours equates to 6,205. Take away about 2,000 hours for a 9 to 5. How long do you really spend out of that with friends?</p>
<p>[2] I just made that up, just like everyone who tells you that modes of communication can be broken down into percentages. How would you measure that? Number of blinks to words spoken? Number of known sex signaling gestures to phonemes? I like to believe someone is writing their PhD thesis on that right now.</p>
tag:pndpo.svbtle.com,2014:Post/bluetooth2014-05-05T10:56:25-07:002014-05-05T10:56:25-07:00New Bluetooth<p>A more secure and advanced method of sharing.</p>
<p>Push a button to broadcast.</p>
<p>Now the device is pulsing out to the world that it is available: it’s “discoverable.” If a nearby device is on the same frequency, both trade a series of keys allowing them to initiate the pairing process. They are encrypted to be sufficiently complicated to limit errors and yet simple enough to be carried out in an instant. In the more advanced versions of this technology, the sets broadcasting their signal run algorithms that randomly iterate through recent topics in culture and the news until they happen to find a match. Depending on the software, the pairing process can include a super advanced paraphrasing algorithm that actually summarizes the content of the topics; a certain number of keywords that were generated by each of the devices individually must match. This process is called “agreeing”. After the initial paring, the programming gets complicated. As a final measure, a sequence of pre-programmed security questions initializes. These questions allow each of the devices to let down their firewalls and sync. Now they are paired. Their actions directly affect the other through the ether between them. They use voice commands to increase something called “heart rate” and “levels of serotonin.” Using physical interactive hardware they can vibrate the air to push “blood” through the other’s “veins”. With simple gestures, the devices can make each other feel complete.</p>
<p>There are still drawbacks. If the distance between the two increases or the software on one device changes, the link can falter. It’s common to have errors in signals where the gestures are not recognized; the voice commands do not elicit a response. In some cases they just lose enough charge for the signal and it fades away completely.</p>
<p>Connection lost.</p>
tag:pndpo.svbtle.com,2014:Post/one-minutes-and-fortysix-seconds-to-read2014-05-05T10:33:46-07:002014-05-05T10:33:46-07:00One Minutes and Forty-Six Seconds to Read<p>This was the morning of Saturday, December 7th. It is composed of perfectly true events.</p>
<p>Sometimes, the intangibles are too good not to capture.</p>
<p>“So where ya off to?”</p>
<p>Behind me sits the seed of a new love affair. It may blossom to a flower if it is watered. An older man with a red nose bandies a bouquet of flowers, fighting his way into a café against the inclement and unexpected weather. An excited look gives his eyes a youthful glint as they dance around the room searching for the recipient of the anti-effluviums. He is the first to arrive and he is eager, boyishly so. </p>
<p>Two minutes earlier I am sitting in a café in front of a plate of eggs Benedict by myself with a mendacious smile on my face. I am fighting back tears thinking about what a tenuous philosophical situation I’ve gotten myself into: stewing in an emotional hangover and mourning the death of fictional characters. </p>
<p>Ten minutes earlier I am on a bike, sloughing through the blistering (California standards) cold neutrally and unabashedly taking in everything and trying not to filter it. I want unadulterated world. </p>
<p>Eight and a half hours earlier I wake up (that’s a lie, I am reading) to the sound of police breaking down the door of my neighbor’s house to arrest him as a torrential rain discharges from the clouds, batting and burbling off the thin roof above. </p>
<p>Four hours before that I am sitting next to the door with my roommate as he is about to leave for The City (of San Francisco though you never say that around here) listening to police heatedly rap on the aforementioned neighbor’s entry way and yelling:</p>
<p>“JOHN, THIS IS JUST A MISUNDERSTANDING COME OUT AND TALK IT OUT! IF YOU DO NOT WE WILL RETURN WITH A SEARCH WARRANT!” </p>
<p>I like to think that if I get into an emotional altercation with someone I’ll yell at the top of my lungs: “I JUST WANT TO TALK THIS OUT - JUST TELL ME HOW YOU FEEL! IF YOU DO NOT I WILL PUNCH YOU!” </p>
<p>Subtext comes across much clearer than content. The conversation behind me will begin after the man stakes out a table, orders a cup of coffee.</p>
<p>His potential counterpart enters with glamorous class and grace in a long tan coat; lingering silver strands of hair cascade down her shoulders. She wears a contented smile and I pretend that in a vacuum, she is perfect for the childishly nervous man. The first thing he says: “So where ya off to?” I never caught her answer and I’ll never know how this new beginning will end. And it is such a youthful and exciting new beginning that it reminds me of all the experiences we won’t know we’ll have until they happen. At the moment, I’m jealous.</p>
<p>The intangibles are just too good to not capture.</p>