You know what really grinds my gears?, ant traps, the Faux-verton Window

another krappy newsletter #6

Hey gang,

Welcome to another edition of another krappy newsletter! I am writing to you from my apartment in Northern California. The weather remains hot with a chance of smoke. Who knows when this is going to end…

I long for consecutive days of liking being outside at this point.

Mainly so I can drop this dope cartoon on people:

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You know what really grinds my gears?

Honestly, this week has been a frustrating time to be a Californian. So much so that California government is going to be the subject of my first segment of “You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?”

The inspiration for this section comes from Peter Griffin’s segment in Family Guy":

You know what really grinds my gears?

The California government and their selective shame tactics.

This summer in California has been characterized by the government systematically shaming us whilst taking no responsibility for the conditions that may have lead to us acting that way.

Two examples:

• Fires. The state is essentially on fire 24/7 this time of year. We know exactly how to stop these megafires from happening, but we choose to do nothing about it. Instead, we focus on demonizing gender reveal parties.

  Don’t get me wrong, I am not here to fight for gender reveal parties. Frankly, I don’t care what gender your child is going to be. I already blocked you after your first intolerable pregnancy update. “The size of a grapefruit now.” Cool story, bro. I didn’t make it to the gender reveal episode of your sad reality television show. But now that I am getting the recap of the “you burned down thousands of acres of land” season finale, I am here to mildly call attention to the fact that we keep blaming new reasons for fires rather than addressing root cause. We live in an area that is designed to burn and we choose unpredictable massive fires instead of smaller controlled burns.

  But at least sometimes, you get a really cool photo out of it:

Photo credit: TG, Big Sur fire

• Energy. Turning on your air conditioning is now a shameable offense.

  

  Why? Because we are low on power. Why are we low on power? Because we chose to deliver empowered speeches about how we are going green instead of delivering actual energy. It would be great to focus the attention on how raising a new nuclear power plant could get us out of this energy deficit. But the government again shames the public: “WhY yOu NeEd AlL dAt ElEcTrIcItY?” We are not being unreasonable by asking for power. We pay the highest (or about the highest) taxes in the country…

Don’t buy into their garbage selective shaming schemes. These problems are fixable. Choose to focus on the solutions.

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Two new ideas I am playing with:

1. Engaging in politics on social media is an ant trap.

Now that I have given you a thorough dose of political banter, allow me to be a hypocrite and tell you why that is something you shouldn’t do.

I have dealt with a lot of ants recently (which, by the way, super sucks.) For those of you fortunate to not know this, the way ant traps work is that they lure worker ants with sugar or some other food source. That food has been treated with a very low dose of something toxic to ants. The poison works so slowly that it allows the worker ants to make repeated trips back to the queen with the bait. The point is for the ants to pick up the poison and bring it back to their homes to destroy the home from the inside out.

The metaphor here is clear: the point of political posts on social media is to poison you so you bring it home with you and destroy your home. It’s not to inform you. 

2. Faux-verton Window vs. Overton Window

The Overton window is the range of ideas the public is willing to consider and accept.

New concept I am officially coining today:

The Faux-verton window is when you don’t say what’s on your mind because you think your idea is outside the Overton Window when in reality it is what most reasonable people think.

The Faux-verton window arises because you have come to falsely believe that the extremist views popularized by the media are the only acceptable views. This results in you feeling a fear that you are going to get ‘canceled’ for what is actually a super mild opinion.

Questions to ask myself when considering what I should say in public:

• Is this actually an incendiary, cancellable offense or is this actually what everyone is thinking, but not saying aloud?

• Given the data I have today, would I feel comfortable standing behind this opinion in 10 years?

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Cement

Engineering is magic. Consider that we turn this chunk of rock:

Into this masterpiece:

All by understanding chemistry.

This process of turning raw materials into structures and devices is all around us all the time. Whether we are turning sand into microchips or horses into glue.

Below is the rest of an amazing thread about cement that I deeply enjoyed:

Jason Crawford @jasoncrawford

Someone asked me recently what's a boring topic that I'm excited/fascinated by. That's easy: cement. If it's wasn't thousands of years old, cement would seem futuristic. Think about it: it's *liquid rock*! Here's how it works:

And if you like that, you will love the entire blog post about it.

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Photo of the week

This is a picture I took of my friend taking a picture of meat. COVID can’t stop the majesty of a Labor Day BBQ.

Trialing out adding in this share button at the bottom. What a fun thing to add! Even more fun if you actually press it.