Category: post

A subject that my mind has been unreasonably fascinated (dare I say fixated) on recently is this; no one really knows why we yawn. There are theories, of course — from one’s blood containing increased amounts of carbon dioxide in need of release to a body’s way of controlling brain temperature. Especially elusive is why it seems to be contagious. There are many theories but no definitive answer.

Something as common and basic as yawning is a mystery and I love this. I love such known unknowns. It seems like there should be a simple explanation for such a common benign thing , and yet it alludes even the minds of science.

This is true of many things, especially when it comes to the brain and human behavior. We know more about the far reaches of the universe than we do the depths of our own mind. This gives me a great comfort. I can’t really explain why. The best explanation is it makes me feel human.

Which leads me to wonder about the limits of artificial intelligence…

Because, as far as I understand it, it can only ever know what we know. Perhaps it can take all the disparate pieces of our knowledge and see connections and come up with new ideas and solutions based on these that we humans would be otherwise limited to. But, those limits of human knowledge correspondingly are the limits of AI. AI may be able to beat us in collective capacity and perhaps even speed of understanding, but its knowledge, or lack there of, is ours.

AI can’t tell me, definitively, scientifically proven and agreed upon, why we yawn. And it won’t be able to until we humans can begin to answer that question ourselves. Until we take all of the theories, do all of the testing, run it through scientific methods, and be able to say, with an overwhelming level of certainty, “We yawn because…”

So, this puny human will continue to obsess over and be delighted by the mysteries of our amazing brain and rest in the comfort that AI doesn’t know any more than we do.

At my daughter Beatrix’s school, an old money private college prep school, it has become a tradition to hang up college rejection letters in the Senior Commons. Personal details blacked out. Mostly, just the recipients name since these are generally form letters. A whole wall of “We regret to inform you…” and “We had an large number of qualified applicants like yourself but…”

All of the Ivy League schools are represented (Yale, Harvard, etc.). Of course, many of the top State Schools are too (Penn,The Ohio State, etc.). The various Institutes of Science and Technology as well (MIT, RIT, etc.). Basically, these are almost all schools you would have heard the names of. And though almost all of these kids do get many acceptances to and end up attending many prestigious schools, including many of the ones hanging on this wall, not every kid is accepted into every school. These are the ones that got away from them. The moon shots and far reaches or just the wrong boards in a bingo game.

I love this tradition. The kids do too. It is a way of dealing with disappointment and rejection that is healthy, cathartic, and even celebratory.

The school administration tried to stop it this year. I had a hard time discerning from them a clear argument why. They made some general handwaving about it being too negative. Some general Peanuts Adult whah whah about defeatism.

The kids pushed back. The teachers took their side and lobbied with them. The school counsellors (all licensed therapists/phycologists) supported them. They argued that this was an incredibly healthy way to deal with rejection. That it helps normalize for these high achieving kids that you can’t win them all. That sometimes in life, no matter how hard you work, the answer is still no.

The letters went up. A mini-museum of healthy failure.

Sometime shortly before Beatrix was born, Bethany being prescient asked me, “So if there’s a problem during delivery, do you stay with me or go with the kid?”

“What is this? This is like a Cosmo test, right?”

Does Your Baby Daddy Love You? Find Out With This One Simple Trick!”

“I stay with you, of course!”, I answered.

It was the wrong answer.

So when it came to pass that, after a long arduous labor, many attempts to get Beatrix to come out, finally leading to a c-section, and a heart issue was detected within the first few seconds, Beatrix was whisked away by the team of nurses to the NICU and I followed.

She looked like a prizefighter. One that had gone the full 12 rounds and won only by split decision. Her face was puffy and swollen, one eye a bit blackened, her mouth in a resting scowl.

So there we were, just staring at each other, her first 6 hours on this planet were just Beatrix and me (and the occasional nurse to check in) while we waited for various tests to be run. Bethany was not allowed to be in the NICU. Due to the c-section she was not sterile. They wheeled her down from recovery briefly, a couple of hours in, and I was allowed 5 minutes to bring Beatrix out so her mother could hold her for just a bit before being wheeled back.

It sounds so cliche to say that I remember it as if it was yesterday, because it seems like it was. It’s burned into my memory because for that tenuous six hours, unsure really what the heart issue was and what it all meant, I knew I only had one thing to do — look at her. Look at every eyelash surrounding her blue eyes, every tiny wrinkle on her hands and feet, even her sort-of-black eye.

Beatrix was wide awake too. Blue eyes darting all around intensely interested. A look almost of shock but likely wonder as to how it could be that she went from the relative comfort and security of her mother’s womb to… This! Bright lights and beeps and voices and whirring machines. From safety to life. Her heart may not be perfect but she was going to use every bit of it to survive. She was a fighter.

That was 18 years ago today.

And here is Beatrix now. Still rolling with the punches life keeps throwing at her and her peers. Covid and the George Floyd Uprising and now the Siege of her City. Still surviving each and every round. Keeping her guard up but landing plenty of good ones herself.

And here her Mother and I are, on the cusp of sending her once again from safety to life. Just as uncertain as to what the future will hold. Only certain that no matter what she’ll take every hit and survive every round and in the end the judges will rule in her favor. She trained her whole life for this. She’s a fighter.

It’s a thought that ran through my head while observing Lucio getting abducted. It went like this, “If there’s 6 ICE guys here detaining this one young man, what are the other 2994 I know are in the city up to at this moment? Where are they? What are they doing?”

The truth is I and the half dozen others that just happened to be there that moment were lucky. We were just in the wrong place at the right time. There were hundreds of detainments going on around the city at that same time that no one was around to film. There have been hundreds daily. For every detainment you do see on social media that happens to be caught on video, there are many, many, more where no observers were around to document.

It’s wonderful that little Liam Ramos was released. Because of the picture seen around the country and the world, pressure was high to right this injustice and a scathing rebuke and order by a judge was actually followed (this time) and Liam is back with his people. That’s terrific.

But what of the other 3800 children (and that’s only the ones accounted for) in similar detention centers? The ones without a photo going viral? What about the others at Liam’s school? The truth is that children are kidnapped and disappeared by these agents every day since this siege began. Most remain in detention. Most US Citizens who were born here. Who is going to fight for them?

But this is not all we don’t see. The woman who was arrested by ICE at gunpoint for peacefully observing and later rescued by the town Sheriff is lucky. There are many peaceful observers and protesters still in custody despite being detained unconstitutionally. But it’s not only them we’re not seeing. Pay close attention to this…

The woman’s husband eventually arrives and tries to intervene, and he made a separate recording of the interaction on his phone. He tells the agents not to search her car because they don’t have a warrant and it would be an illegal search. The agents appear dismissive of his constitutional concerns.

“I’m not getting into the legality of everything,” one agent responds tersely.

What we’re not focussing on is the ignoring of our constitution by federal agents. They do not have the right to search the vehicle (4th amendment) and have no warrant to do so. They are told this and yet do it anyway ( “I’m not getting into the legality of everything”). And what many outside of the city are not understanding is that this is happening hundreds of times a day. Doors are knocked down, peaceful protesters are being attacked, the right to bear arms is being questioned, Miranda rights not granted, etc. We have federal agents willfully ignoring fundamental constitutional rights over and over and over again.

We see the righting of one wrong while failing to see the hundreds and thousands of other ones. We see one kid returned while thousands more remain missing. We see one observer returned or released while hundreds more — US Citizens — remain detained. We see one law abiding neighbor abducted yet thousands more have been disappeared. We see one constitutional right ignored in one instance when it is standard operating procedure for the agents.

So for every video you see, know there are hundreds you haven’t. For every child taken, know there are hundreds more. For every right trampled, know that they plan to ignore them all.

Pay close attention to the things you don’t see.

The first of a few posts about the work here last year and my plans for the year to come.

These are the things I wrote that I’m the most proud of.

• Take good care of your body. After all, you only have one.

• I thought a lot about culture change. I still do.

• In fact, everything we call “culture” and “society” is built on one thing and one thing only; trust.

• I also thought about AI as a tool for learning.

• Are you leaving things better than you found them?

• Everything good in my life is because I have a policy of yes.

• Your path is your path.

• All I’ve ever aimed to be is a knower of things and it’s all the working world has ever wanted from me.

• Beatrix is the most astute art critic I know and gives a fine example of how we should think about art.

Ever since she was a little kid, when Beatrix is having the most fun ever — the time of her life — her face is serious. No smiles or laughter. No wide-eyed wonderment. Dead serious. It remains that way to this day. If her face looks like this, she’s having a blast.

This was her at Mardi Gras in New Orleans watching a parade. Loving every second. Serious.

Seeing Hamilton or Hadestown (with the original casts, no less) on Broadway? Serious.

Seeing Frozen at five years old? Very serious.

When we were first noticing this, we’d stop to ask her, “Is everything OK honey?”

“Yeah! Why?”

Beatrix is one book you should never judge by her cover.

The occasion of jumping on the bandwagon of disagreement with this Daring Fireball post regarding AI generated art and inspired by Alan Jacob’s take on it allows me the chance to tell one of my favorite art stories about one of my favorite art works… Mark Mothersbaugh’s “Ruby Kusturd”

Some may know that I’m a big fan of the band DEVO and also a longtime fan of the artwork of band’s lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh. So when his retrospective exhibition, Myopia, came to the Twin Cities in 2015 I went several times to view it.

The first of these I went alone so I could spend as much time as I wanted with the works. I was fairly familiar with most of his work so imagine my surprise and delight when I saw something that seemed almost incongruous with the rest of the pieces there that I was not familiar with. Tucked into the corner in a glass display case was a very large (2 ft?) representation of an ice cream cone.

I engaged with the piece for a minute or two with no reference other than my own consideration. Then, I read the description card (forgive the long quote but it’s important to the story)…

According to Mothersbaugh, he stumbled upon the colossal ruby when he was hanging out with a gemologist friend who “had this story about a gem mine where somebody was just in a hurry to get rid of a bunch of stuff, and he happened to be at the right place at the right time and he bought it for a ridiculously low price.” The two discussed how the types of people who usually buy these absurdly large gems have often acquired their money by rather sinister means—they are members of drug cartels, Russian oil executives, mobsters. Mothersbaugh decided that he’d like to carve the ruby. Specifically, he’d like to carve the ruby into the shape of a turd… “So whoever owns the world’s largest ruby, [has] to buy a turd to get it.” To disguise the turd as a scoop of ice cream, Mothersbaugh placed the ruby into a beautiful, highly polished bronze cone. Only the title alludes to the less-than-savory subject Mothersbaugh chose to depict (“kus-TURD”).

My jaw nearly hit the floor.

This was the most punk-rock-fuck-you-money-delisciously-absurdist-DEVO thing EVER! This alone, to me, was worth the price of admission. This piece spoke to me so deeply after reading the card and learning the story behind it. By itself, it was a curiosity. With the story — it was profound.

A few days later, I took Beatrix to see the exhibition. She was 7 years old at the time but, believe it or not (and if you’ve read what I’ve written and the various quotes from her I’ve posted here over the years you will) also the most astute art critic I knew. She has always had a keen eye and a frank honesty unspoiled by expectation or popular opinion.

As we wandered the halls and took in the works I said nothing about the giant ice cream cone. When we came upon it she almost breezed right past it. I stopped her and asked her to consider it. As she did, I told her the story…

“Mark made enough money in DEVO and his other commercial film and TV scoring gigs that he was able to buy the world’s largest ruby, have it carved into a creamy turd, and then stick it into a bronze ice cream cone base. Basically, as a giant F-you to the very idea of capitalism, value, and wealth. The most punk rock thing ever!”

Beatrix had one response…

“That’s stupid.”

Yep. Yes… It is. It is that too.

And, this, in a nutshell, is how to think about art. I often say, “Art always does its job.” Art is designed to provoke a reaction. A feeling. Even indifference is a provocation — a reaction. If I see a piece of art and think not much of it and you see it and think it a masterpiece, it has done the job for us both. Art always does its job.

This story also helps remind me that art does not stand alone, in a vacuum. The truth of the mater is that Ruby Kusturd was a simple curiosity to me for a few minutes until I read the story of how and why it was created. The story turned it from curiosity to masterpiece in my mind.

It begs the question of where art really exists. Does it stand alone or only within the context of the story — one we create for ourselves or one we learn by reading the little white card or one we are told or learn along the way? Does one’s opinion of Mona Lisa change when you learn how small it is and that any art critic will tell you it’s not a great painting technique-wise on the same level as, say, Salvator Mundi or if you learn that the only reason it is popular (this has largely been proven) is because of a Nat King Cole song?

So how and why and story actually do matter when it comes to art. It is as crucial to the consideration of the work as the work itself. It is part of the work and can’t simply be ignored. To say otherwise is to not understand art at all.

In recognition of the end of my 58th year on this planet and the beginning of my 59th (The way we count age is strange in that we mark the end of a year instead of the beginning — i.e. We turn 1 years old at the end of our first year), here are 58 off the things I’ve learned thus far — all culled from the archives of this blog (this is why blogging matters — it is a record of personal knowledge)…

1. Art is history
2. Sometimes life sends you back to where you began so you can choose a different path forward.
3. The most important lessons in life can’t be taught. Only learned.
4. Surround yourself with women smarter than you and listen to them. Listening to women is a superpower.
5. When someone uses the phrase, “With all due respect” don’t plan to receive any because they believe you are due none.
6. Ignore the daily ups/downs of the market. Measure the trends over years..
7. The real drivers of success and sustainability for any company or organization (or individual) won’t appear on a balance sheet.
8. I’ve reached “jeans are no longer my default, chinos are” years old.
9. Heads on pikes outside the gates of a city work best when they are tall enough for the heads to be seen inside the gates of the city.
10. Cooking good, real, food for my family is a love language.
11. There is no us and them
12. Back up the digital with the physical.
13. Paper is always DRM free
14. This is life. This is what matters.
15. I don’t like to dwell on what ifs when there is so much here now to choose from.
16. Trust is, quite literally, the glue that holds society together.
17. There are two questions that drive us all: Is this all there is? Is this all I am?
18. The problem with common sense is that it isn’t all that common and many people think they have way more sense than they really do.
19. The world could use more unreasonable optimism.
20. Over time I’ve discovered I have a few new years day rituals.
21. I’ve also enjoyed the more recent practice of choosing a word for the year.
22. Writing is the only way I know of to make my thoughts clear.
23. The thing with grudges is that the longer you hold them, the more likely it is that those you are holding it against have long forgotten it.
24. Just be honest with yourself about lukewarm coffee.
25. Also, be honest with yourself about news.
26. Polls are propaganda.
27. It is our job to ask ourselves with all the things we allow ourselves to do, with each and every one, “Is this something I want to be remembered for?”
28. If you change nothing, nothing changes.
29. The footsteps of the future are formed in the present.
30. We are living in history and history is living in us.
31. What makes a Plan A foolproof is having a Plan B.
32. No plan can be foolproof if those in charge of it are fools.
33. Think often and always of what current choices you can make to have future you be thankful to past you.
34. “Everybody does it” is not exactly a strong defense.
35. When someone talks about “affordable housing” always ask, “For whom?
36. I have thoughts about mentors.
37. There’s no such thing as good guys and bad guys.
38. Wounds to the heart will heal. Wounds to the soul will not.
39. In my world. It’s not officially Autumn until I order my first Pumpkin Spice Latte. As a tradition, that day is today. Happy Autumn.
40. Circus rigging will leave you with glitter in the strangest places.
41. I’ve still never listened to an audiobook. Not my thing.
42. It’s OK to have things that are not your thing.
43. Don’t yuk someone else’s yum.
44. You will enjoy making the list more than you enjoy doing the list. But it will not be nearly as satisfying as having done the list. This is OK. This is normal.
45. Sometimes, the most helpful and courageous thing you can say is, “I don’t know”.
46. Always remember to account for thinking through it time in any project.
47. Your Path is Your Path.
48. I am where I am today because of a policy of yes.
49. This policy and path led me to be a knower of things.
50. Leave things better than you found them. Leave people that way too.
51. You don’t need an algorithm to tell you what you love.
52. You should do the work because the work is worth doing. The work is how you grow and that makes the work worth doing every time.
53. Tools should have rules.
54. There are pictures no camera can take.
55. No news is no news.
56. Mental Illness can be an explanation but not an excuse.
57. All the things I learned in 2022.
58. How to make the world better.

Here is my car the day I test drove it. I went back to the dealership and bought it.

I have loved this car. Everything about it. It was so comfortable to drive. It was my daily driver and we’ve taken it across the country several times. For a 15 year old car with 170k miles it seemed to be just hitting its stride. It has served me well from daily commuting to errands to hauling 10 foot tall Christmas trees inside with the hatch closed (it had an amazing amount of interior room).

This car likely saved my life.

The guy at the collision place said that there was no way any other make of vehicle would have taken a drivers side hit that pushed the car along 15 feet by a fully loaded FedEx truck and had the driver walk away without a scratch.

The FedEx manager who came to the scene said he’s never seen a car do that much damage to the truck that hit it.

The police officer said for someone my age who has never even had so much as a moving violation, let alone an accident, I sure did pick a doozy for my first time.

I’m a bit sore this morning so will be going in for a check just to make sure all is actually well. That said, my heart is a bit broken at the loss. This was the car that Beatrix has been learning to drive and the plan was to give it to her to take to college. Those plans now have to change.

But, mainly, this is a public thank you to a car that brought me a tremendous amount of joy and utility over the years. It served me and my family gallantly.

My beloved Chevy truck will become my daily driver for now until the dust settles and I find a worthy replacement for the car. I’m thankful for that.

P.S. Thanks to all of the people, too many to name, who reached out to check on me and offer condolences. It means the world to me.

Beatrix,

There are a lot of adults right now, especially those closest to you, telling you their stories about their path. How they did in high school, where they went to college (or didn’t), how they ended up doing what they do. What their major was and how it doesn’t even resemble what they actually do now (as it is for most college graduates).

I know this confuses, frustrates, and bores you to tears. I know both your Mom and (especially) I are the worst offenders of this.

I’m sorry. We can’t help ourselves.

You can mostly ignore all the details and tune out the stories. They won’t help you. That was our path. That was what worked for us. Where we are is a result of our choices (life is built by choices) to say yes or no to the opportunities placed before us. But those choices and opportunities were ours alone and unique to us. You will get your own.

But, don’t ignore the “why” behind we adults telling you this stuff. Some of it over and over again (because we’re old and repeat ourselves — likely a symptom of early onset dementia).

The “why” is this: There are many possible paths. Our path was our path paved with our opportunities and our choices. Your path is and always will be your path paved by your choices.

And, inside of all of these stories from all of these people are examples of how one small simple seemingly inconsequential choice or random chance encounter changed the trajectory of our entire lives.

When a friend asked me for a favor to help out a lady with her computer and I said yes and despite having a very bad case of the flu I showed up anyway and did the work and now, here you are on the edge of senior year the daughter of those two people brought together by a hard drive failure and a simple favor.

The point being that every “yes” matters and every “no” matters and that your path will be yours alone and your choices pave it and gosh you are already sick of reading this and “Dad, I get it already! Shut up!” but I only have about a year to tell you all of this and it does not seem like nearly enough time and your path is moving SO quickly now and seems out of control and I’m your parent damn-it I should be making sure you get all of the best things and go to the college you want and make sure your life is everything you want it to be but the world is changing and you are changing and it’s all out of control and happening so fast and…

I can’t. Your path is your path. Your choices guide you and only you.

You are too old for my shit or your Mom’s shit or anyone else’s shit. Time for us to shut up and let you do your own shit.