Follow The Sun Week 3: The Beauty of Structure

The most delightful and unexpected outcome of our follow the sun experiment is that the sunlight imposes structure on our days.  Liz and I would never have chosen to read during dinner and then walk and talk after sunset before this experiment.  But the limitations imposed by sunset created the conditions where it is now justified to do this. The structure of our days forces us out of what had been the default into something else: a new opportunity to make an intentional choice about what we do with our time.    

How long do we intend to keep on doing this?  Probably for the next month at least.  Then August will come and shatter this structure with some family beach time.  Family time is well worth it, I think.

How could we continue this into the winter?  I am thinking that we can keep the summer sun schedule.  Awake at 0600.  Lights out at 845p.  Make up the shorter days with artificial lights until lights out.  Could be good.

A Close Look at Genocide: Rwanda

If you're feeling dark about the state of humanity based on killings in news in the USA of late, you might benefit from the perspective of understanding exactly how far down the pit of darkness goes.

The full tour of the darkness of humanity needs to include a look at the Rwandan Genocide. According to Wikipedia:

The Rwandan genocide, known officially as the genocide against the Tutsi,[2] was a genocidal mass slaughter of Tutsi in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority government. An estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Rwandans were killed during the 100-day period from April 7 to mid-July 1994,[1] constituting as many as 70% of the Tutsi and 20% of Rwanda's total population.

But Wikipedia doesn't set the atmosphere quite right. It's a bit too sterile. You're looking at things from too far a distance. For a view from the ground, I recommend Episide 16 of the Jocko podcast, "Machete Season" in which he reads excerpts from a book with the same title.

I recommend that you do this and I'll use Jocko's own words to make the case:

  • ...something that I know: there is evil in the world, there is darkness, and it exists and it is real. And it comes from us. It's human. It is people. WE... are evil. It wasn't a monster that murdered all those people: those men, and those women, and those children, and those babies. It wasn't an animal or some force of nature like a tornado or a hurricane or a tsunami. And it wasn't Satan, and it wasn't some mysterious evil spirit. It was us. And that is downright horrifying.
  • But there is a counter to that. There is a dichotomy to that. And that is the fact that while we are the evil in this world... WE... are also the good. We are the light that counters this darkness.
  • We all have the capacity... all of us do in some way... maybe not directly. Maybe not face-to-face with evil. But we can help. All of us can help
  • The message that I take away from all of this is that... WE need to focus on what good we can do to help people. Who can we help get better? Who can we help improve their station in life? What threatened person can we defend? What oppressed person can we free? What fellow human being can we remove from the grip of fear?
  • "What person in the world can we take from the darkness out into the light?" That's the question and the answer that I brought away from this.

It comes down to this: "You can't appreciate the light if you don't understand the darkness."

We can have a look at the darkness. We can appreciate the light around us. And we can focus. And we can ask ourselves how can we bring our brothers and sisters out into the light.

I journey through the darkness to fully understand just how light it is. That's my case for checking out the Rwandan Genocide.

References

This is a Youtube video of the podcast reading. It's only the first hour or so of the video. There's some Q&A stuff in the second half.


Jocko Podcast 16 - With Echo Charles | Machete Season - YouTube

Just Shut Up Already

I like to think I spend a lot of time writing what I notice here.

I actually spend a lot of time and energy arguing. When I see an attitude or a story someone holds as true that will lead to mob "justice" of any kind I tend to try to refute it.

I should know better by now. I should just shut up already.

I have this story in my head that somehow if I can replace enough bad stories with good ones, that the world will change.

Bad story file:

  • All black people are dangerous criminals
  • All police officers are unaccountable
  • All white people are privileged and inhuman
  • All Muslims have responsibility for the global jihadist movement
  • The global jihadist movement has nothing to do with Islam
  • There is nothing about our system that needs to change
  • Voting for XXX for [insert office here] is going to make anything about the world better

Reality file:

  • Most people don't think they have influence over the system or other people

Good story file:

  • Being human is hard
  • It's easier when we work together
  • Most people don't want bad stuff to happen to you
  • Live and Let Live is something we need to live out loud
  • You can't ask for someone's help or influence them while simultaneously judging them (e.g. Calling them hypocrites or privileged)

The truth is grim. To replace a story in my head, I have to practice again and again living out an alternate story. I have to live it week-after-week until it even registers as a path in my brain and body.

What chance in the world do any of us have to change other people? Other than the occasional wake-up call, it's really up to them.

Well... Wake Up America. Time to search within ourselves and try to understand what we can do about the killing.

A Moment on the Soap Box: Victim Privilege

There was an event in Dallas last night in which a peaceful vigil ended with a sniper gunning down 5 police officers in cold blood. I saw someone refer to this as "the tables have turned".

This is psychologically revealing. Want to talk about privilege? Let's talk about "victim privilege".

Things in extreme often become their opposites. Joe victim, on a long enough timescale, tells story after story about his inhuman oppressors and eventually decides to take action. As a victim, he feels entitled to do harm to his supposed oppressors and other members of their class.

Victim privilege is a part of the psychology that justifies mob violence. And it's a part of the psychology that makes a moral virtue out of gunning down police officers.

Victim privilege is the end result of all identity politics. It is a form of mob entitlement.

And it is self-perpetuating. I am only concerned with what others have to say to the extent that they are rational people. As such, I tend to dismiss anyone who sounds entitled. This particularly includes those speaking out of Victim Privilege. I expect I am not alone in this response.

Our silent dismissal is taken as "ignoring" their plight. And the gap widens.

I'm drawing a new line: "We are in this together to figure out how to raise everyone up to the point where equal rights are respected and protected, especially the right to keep living your life in liberty. We respect all life. We don't care about skin color or labels. And we respect the noble burden of those who choose to put their own lives on the line in the service of creating the most civil society the world has ever seen."

If this isn't what you have to say along with me... Just shut up already.

I don't suppose anyone who doesn't agree will actually do that... So: You can call me a hypocrite. You can throw every kind of label at me you want. You can tell me that I'm Man-splaining or Asian-splaining or whatever. You can catalog all of the times I don't give enough airtime to whatever cause it is you think I need to be beating the drum about.

And I'll do my best to ignore you and pretend you don't exist since that's what you're going to accuse me of anyway.

If this isn't you, sorry for the soap box talk. I'm shutting up now.

We Can and Must Do Better

"To admit we’ve got a serious problem in no way contradicts our respect and appreciation for the vast majority of police officers who put their lives on the line to protect us every single day. It is to say that, as a nation, we can and must do better to institute the best practices that reduce the appearance or reality of racial bias in law enforcement."

Amen.

References

Ending Racism by Enrollment Rather than Privilege and Guilt

Following is the latest from another round of replies on the same thread on Medium that I posted about yesterday. This is a rich discussion even though there is a bit of talking past one another.

  • I am challenged on whether I am diluting the original author's experience
  • I claim that writing about racism implies a goal of changing the system
  • I lay out my ideas on how discussion of privilege is often, "an underhanded way of slandering people and “being right” without affecting any real change"
  • Why I think guilt is not enough to affect change and instead we need to enroll everyone

I’m going to start by talking about what we agree on.

Miss Matti’s piece as written is perfectly fine as it is and no one is asking her to change that piece. As written, it moved me to care enough to respond.

My response isn’t neutral. I did challenge a perception. And I did make a suggestion. It’s my right to do this just as it is her right to put into words how she felt about her direct experience. It’s also her right to ignore me if she thinks I am a waste of time.

I would like to clarify that if Miss Dominique Matti feels discouraged or diminished in any way, by any word of what I have written, I will gladly apologize to her directly for this. Not that she should care about what I think other than the extent to which I make sense (which is exactly the extent to which I care about people).

You are right also that Miss Matti may not be interested in changing the system with her piece. But her writing isn’t neutral either. And it just so happens that we are agreed: We do not care to have racism exist at all. Let’s squash it.

And what good would it do to end racism if the system remained exactly the same? Changing the system is implied. This is what I see as the larger purpose.

Yes, I am presumptuous to assume she would care to hear my thoughts on the matter. I am fine with that.

You are right that I have my own purposes. I desire to defeat tyranny in all its forms, including the tyranny imposed upon Black Americans. And I intend to be really nosy and I get involved in discussions that don’t concern me directly but are interesting nonetheless. I intend to challenge perceptions when I think they do not serve the larger purpose.

Maybe I need to check this, because maybe I’m being discouraging or shutting people down. I am taking that to heart as a part of your message to me.

A Pet Peeve: Privilege and Guilt

I will also own that discussions of privilege and guilt are generally a pet peeve of mine. This is not always the case, but I find that it is common: discussing privilege is used as an underhanded way of slandering people and “being right” without affecting any real change.

Here’s how this game works: I declare someone in power and comfort to be privileged. I talk about how my people are suffering. If the privileged react, I know I’m right and I shut down anything they say as [xxx]-splaining. If they don’t react I say that they’re ignoring me/us because of their privilege.

It is sophistry: Heads, they lose. Tails, they lose.

But… The system stays the same. No one grows. No one learns. No new connections are formed. No compassion granted. None given in return.

Well, I don’t say that all Muslims need to change because of the actions of the militants who decide to kill. (Though I do try to encourage that they live-and-let-live more loudly).

And I don’t say that all White Americans deserve to feel guilty because of the actions of police officers, but I do encourage them to take on the system and challenge their own default perceptions.

Some White Americans will read Matti’s piece and experience guilt, as we see in the comments. Others will blame a system they didn’t choose, and accept no personal blame for it, and move on to the next article. I can’t say that they are totally wrong to feel this way.

Most discussions of privilege qualify as half-truth at best. And the act of name-calling detracts from the goal of offering an opportunity to reflect and change and act. It detracts from enrollment.

Enrolling Everyone

> Why should “white Americans” be included in a struggle that only people of color, especially Blacks are engaged in everyday?

Why do straight people go march in the pride parades? Why do Christians speak out in defense of Muslims after a deadly attack?

Compassion.

Humanity.

The best within us.

Squelching racism and changing the system needs to happen diligently and on all levels of society. Your words.

They are good words.

We, who care enough to combat racism, should be enrolling everyone to challenge their own racism and to care enough to work to change the unjust outcomes in the system.

Some people will need to be convinced that it is urgent and actionable to join the cause. This is why I made my suggestion in the first comment. I stand by my choice.

Matti’s voice reaching across all divides will be stronger than mine because her struggle is not one I am engaged in everyday.

Closing

You are as thought provoking as ever, Mr. Clay Rivers. I don’t expect you to agree with everything I have said. Ultimately, that’s what’s interesting about discussion.

I hope you can grant to my bits of writing the kind of open acceptance that you grant to Miss Matti’s original piece. These are my authentic responses and they come from what I hope are the best parts within me. I have no intent to shut anyone down.

I know I am not neutral, but hopefully you won’t mind if I take your advice also and write “whatever I want in any way that I want for whatever purposes I choose” as well.

If The Antidote To Rage Includes Compassion and Empathy...

Following is a reply I made on Medium on the topics of race, unequal protection of fundamental rights, whether our fundamental American values are to be vilified as lies or half-truths.

I like what I wrote so I am reposting it below.

…watching the lie (“America is a free country!” + “Liberty and justice for all!”) that aids many white Americans in ignoring our struggle entirely is equally painful and infuriating.

But this section where she talks about “watching the lie”, suggests who her core audience is not: white Americans. And I think that is a harmful choice if you don’t like the way things are. You won’t change the system unless you enroll some of them to the cause.

Why do I say that Matti specifically excludes white Americans? Because of her use of active voice: “white Americans **ignore** our struggle”.

My opinion: You can’t observe “ignoring”. But you can observe “inaction”.

Another opinion: Just as I cannot look at Matti’s article and know her full intent in writing it, she cannot look at inaction and determine the intent of white Americans.

Per the top hit on my google search, America in 2016 is:

  • 62% White
  • 18% Hispanic
  • 12% Black
  • 6% Asian

I will wager that the level of **inaction** in regards to the struggle of black people is about equal for all of the non-black categories: White, Asian, Hispanic. I don’t think that Asians, Hispanics, or Whites deserve special blame for **ignoring** the equal protection of the fundamental rights of Black Americans.

So in regards to calling out white Americans specifically, saying that they “ignore” actively is a provocative generalization which undermines the strength of any communication. It creates an opportunity to dismiss her writing as biased in spite of the many truths within. And we cannot begin to think about modifying the system without enrolling a large chunk of that 62%.

If the antidote to rage includes compassion and empathy, here are some things I notice about people, no matter what their race:

  • They feel fundamentally unable to change the system and, even though it is clearly not designed for Black Americans, it is also not designed for anyone who doesn't happen to be wealthy enough to buy a legislator.
  • They are, daily, fighting through struggles of their own. They have to pick their battles. They may not have chosen ours. (And if we think they ought to, it is up to us to persuade them to do so, taking full responsibility for the outcome.).
  • They have limited attention spans and **ignore** most of everything that goes on around them because that’s one of the key functions of their brains in order to manage all there is to notice.

These are true for whites as much as anyone else. It’s true for Muslims. It’s true for gays.

We are all human. Most of us are more worried about the world than we admit.

Most of us are too caught up in some kind of game, trying to learn and cope with rules for a game we didn’t choose but started playing somehow anyway.

Most of us never even ask if the game is worth playing.

Most of us don’t even notice that we’re playing a game.

A final opinion — This is the real battle: We’re not trying to get people to stop ignoring injustice, we’re trying to get them to notice it. To understand the importance of turning their attention toward fighting it in spite of their own pressing struggles. To take the time to patiently talk and come up with ideas about where to begin. To craft a long-term vision which will inspire persistent action.

Affirming Your Inherent Worthiness By Turning a Question into a Statement

"I achieved X today. Is it enough?"

The answer will depend on your criteria. And if the answer isn't an obvious "yes", it's worth noting that the question is an anxiety inducer that doesn't entail any kind of decision. You might just as well be asking, "Do I have permission to feel good about my day?"

If you're asking, by the way, I'll grant you permission: the answer is "yes". (From whom exactly are we seeking permission anyway when we ask silly questions?)

You can always decide to feel good about your day by choosing your criteria. Here's an example: Any day above ground is a good day.

More importantly, you can choose the game that you are playing. A game I am fascinated with is turning useless questions of evaluation into a statement of assessment and inherent worthiness.

"I achieved X today. It is enough."

Do What You Love or Love What You Do

You ought to do what you love. You deserve it. Though likely you won't get paid for it for a long time unless you've been at it for a while.

And since you weren't born famous or fabulously wealthy, you will have to do a lot of doing of things that you don't think you love. Do these lovingly anyway. Love what you do.

When you put a lot of care into any task, no matter how small, someone will notice: You. And you will take it as a compliment.

"By golly, this Franco guy, sure does take pride in the way he sweeps up the cubbies where the cats live at the Petco! He must really be a stand-up guy!"

You'll start to form ideas about yourself. They'll be grand. You'll swell with pride thinking about this person. You may even be tempted to live up to such an idea of yourself.

I suggest you try it. It's the best medicine I have ever taken.

Social Media Companies Need Our Outrage and Hate

I saw a lament today that Twitter doesn't work to create a safe space on their community to prevent vitriol and hate. And I find it unsurprising.

Twitter is the wild west of social media. There are nearly no rules and no barriers to creating new accounts. So it's not surprising that some users feel free to heap abuse on others with no fear of penalty.

Twitter (and Facebook) have every incentive to let outrage, hate, and vitriol happen. To be an effective advertising platform (or user impression data mine) you need a system with active users. Outrage drives traffic and keeps people engaged longer and gives the outraged reactor the illusion that they have done something meaningful. (Just consider how much time you spend crafting a response to something you think is wrong compared to something uplifting and or cute. There is a reason Facebook only had a "Like" button and a reply button for ages.)

CNN and Fox News make a business of scaring the crap out of people to sell advertisements. They thrive on tragedy. Now, these are broadcast media so an analogy is going to be limited when comparing with social media. But I think the dynamic is the same if you substitute tragedy with controversy or outrage.

Right or wrong, that's my opinion on a common dynamic with social media companies. They want us to troll one another. They don't care about what kind of world they create. That's our job.

Photo Credit

# Buffalo Bill 10 | Toda a Arte e Graciosidade das Antigas C… | Flickr

Elizabeth Warren Illustrated How Power Corrupts Back in 2004

I watched a video this morning which offers an insight into the nature of politics in the USA. It is from 2004 and it's a video in which Elizabeth Warren relates a story about meeting Hillary Clinton, the First Lady, and being invited to explain her case against a bankruptcy bill. Clinton understood it and worked to oppose it. In the end, President Bill Clinton Vetoed it.

According to Warren's story, this unkillable bill came back into the senate later, introduced by Senator Hillary Clinton. We have heard that power corrupts. We have heard very cynical ideas about how politicians are only motivated by re-election. This story is a bit of evidence that it's true.

Now I'm not here to help out either of the presidential candidates. We know that no one will be "perfect" and someone has to be elected warts-and-all. Its nice to know what some of those warts are.

I do not take Hillary Clinton to be particularly different than any other politician in this regard. She is the same in kind, even if she may be different in degree. Her constituency consists of her largest donors: both in money and PR opportunities. Because that's how you play the game.

That is how Trump will play the game.

We reject ideologues because of their detachment to reality. But there is a name for a person that compromises every principle they claim they had in the name of practicality: Hypocrite. You cannot have integrity without also having some unmovable principles.

Many voters, fearing ideologues, prefer from their politicians a pragmatic consensus-building way. The pragmatist, however, has every reason to obey the incentives that the system provides. The alternative is getting eliminated from the game too soon. And before you know it, many politicians no longer have any unmovable principles except the ones that keep a politician playing the corporate donor game as long as possible.

The age of industrialism has brought mega corporations and mega government into existence as evil partners that care nothing about your Liberty. Some of the strange behavior we are seeing in the world is a rejection of unaccountable government as it is. I think Trump's campaign is an ill-conceived version of this. I think Brexit is a version of this. I think the relative success of the Sanders campaign was a version of this.

I'm likely to vote Libertarian. It's a way of refusing to play the game as presented. The world goes to hell either way unless some of us stop being so damn pragmatic and give some sense of importance to principles.

So I'm playing a longer game. A game where I attempt to elect people who will act to make government smaller no matter how short their political careers will be. We know everyone else just wants it to be larger since that expands their power (and deepens their corruption).

I will also play a longer game of putting less money on credit cards, because screw these companies if they're going to use profits to lobby the hell out of government. One man can't starve them out alone but one man can perhaps start a movement.

I reject the incentives of the credit card companies. You can keep your 2% cash back in exchange for your 3%+ transaction fees. No thanks.

Nothing in this world comes for free. And odds are that people giving things to you are taking more than they are giving. We should be wary of any incentives presented to us and at least try to understand secondary effects of our actions. A secondary effect of charging everything to a credit card is that the price of everything is increased to cover the transaction fees.

I'll have to decide how I feel about this long term but it occurs to me as an afterthought that it wouldn't be a horrible thing if someone were to create a system to allow people to pay one another on the internet completely bypassing the credit card systems. I'm not sure that bitcoin is it. Paypal certainly wasn't it.

References

Maajid Nawaz at Oslo Freedom Forum

Notes and Quotes from Maajid Nawaz at Oslo Freedom Forum:

Islamism

  • #Islamism is the desire to impose any version of Islam over society. (distinct from Islam, the faith.)
  • #Jihadism: The use of force to spread Islamism
  • There is a misdiagnosis about what we are dealing with. Today, we are dealing with it like an organized crime gang: take out the leader and deal with the gang.
  • We cannot kill/shoot/legislate our way out of this problem.
  • You cannot kill an idea. (Killing Osama bin Laden did no more to kill jihadism than killing Malala did to kill her ideas.)

...it's not new and has support within the communities

  • How on earth is it possible that 6000 born-and-raised European citizens go to join the worst terrorist group that history has ever known if not for the fact that there was level of support within the communities for this ideology?
  • This ideology has been propagated for decades in Europe.

...and we have to give ourselves permission to talk about it, even though we fear being labeled bigots

  • The solution is to give people permission to have this conversation. (The danger lies in not wanting to appear as an anti-Muslim bigot, or a racist, or an Islamophobe.)
  • The alternative to talking is violence and conflict as we have seen for the last decade and longer.

...we can challenge intolerable acts whomever we think we are, and we don't need to be Islamic scholars to do so

  • You do not need to be black to challenge racism
  • You don't have to be gay to challenge homophobia
  • So none of you should be told that you cannot condemn stoning a woman to death or throwing gays off of tall buildings or chopping off body parts.
  • You don't need to know anything about the Quran... nor the Hadith to condemn stoning a woman to death

...and now that we are free to talk about this, here are some things we need to come up with:

  • Let's work together to build these 5 things that the civil society needs to push back against this theocratic ideology: Ideas, Narratives, Symbols, Leaders, A Goal. (The violent jihadists have all of these.)

References

Here's how to talk about Islamist extremism without invading countries or pretending it doesn't exist, freestyled in 10 mins at the Oslo Freedom Forum

#Solidarity #Tyranny

A Job Hopping Pattern: Seeing Opportunity in Drudgery and Paying Attention

There are reasons to feel disillusioned with the idea of tech companies and tech startups. Unicorn status is the primary goal these days and some put their valuation ahead of every other consideration: culture, impact, sustainability, responsibility.

If I look back on my career, the companies I have worked for were all tech startups that had grown into more mature companies. They have provided me with a really comfortable living. Since college, I haven't had to wonder how I'd make my bills on any given month.

I started on desktop work in college and when I finished college that's what I was doing. It is work with a lot of drudgery. Dull work.

You might ask why anyone would take on a job that involves drudgery but that's a key feature of most of the jobs available to a person just starting out, and it's a common characteristic of every job you can get at any level.

There is a duality that ensures that any job you get involves drudgery: Without the impetus of pain sufficient to drive an employer to hire in order to offload that pain, the job would not exist at all. On the other hand, if the job were just something that needs doing and is easy, you'd have a lot of competition for the job and it would pay very little. The sweet spot is always drudgery that isn't easy.

Now I'm going to say something profoundly important: In business, the opportunity is found in the drudgery provided that you perform the work with the best attitude you can muster AND you pay attention.

Paying Attention

There are two things which deserve your particular attention in any job:

  1. How can you improve the way things are done? Can you design a system that will make any of your tasks take less labor? Can you reduce errors or improve consistency? Can you template any interactions? This is the application of systems thinking to your job.
  2. As you do your job, what other functions do you interact with at the edge of your work? Are any of them something you have been curious to learn more about? Are any of them a truer fit to your personality and interests? If so, it is possible that these edges present possible next opportunities for you to grow into.

I look at the balance of my work life since 1998 and I've generally been able to niche into the most interesting work at some edge within the space I was working. As I said, I had started out doing desktop support. And I was immediately frustrated with the complete lack transparency on the internals of Microsoft Windows. They don't give you much diagnostic info with which to troubleshoot. It was not supportable. So far as I could tell there are two reliable operations implemented by Windows: format disk and install software. (It is not surprising to me that Linux has a larger market share on the server side of things.)

At the edge of working in Desktop support was software development and network engineering. I made sure to chat up the network engineer when we did the transition to Ethernet at my desktop job. This was likely what I was going to aim for and what I spent spare time studying.

But it was really specialized. And it would take a lot of years to get there. Working at an ISP would do. And... thanks to a college connection, I was hired a Sales Engineer at an Internet Service Provider out of college. UUNET. Back in 1998, this felt like the promised land of unlimited opportunity.

What they never tell you in college is that getting the job is the beginning of the story and the struggle. And boy did I struggle. I struggled with the bureaucratic jargon of telecoms. CFA/LOA. Demarc. Routers. BGP. There was a lot that I didn't understand and couldn't quite visualize. I had the job but I wasn't the strongest performer on my team. Eventually, when the opportunity came up, I transitioned into Sales Eng group for colocation and web hosting.

I didn't start thriving as a Sales Engineer until I was selling technology for which I had a crystal clear model of the system in my head. Web hosting is pretty-much just computers and software systems connected by Ethernet. It made much more sense to me and was a much better fit for my skills and interests.

In spite of the obviously better fit, I put in a lot of effort to develop key skills so that I could be successful at this job. I did this primarily by taking full advantage of the smart people around me who knew much more than I did and were willing to share what they knew. With their coaching, I taught myself the basics of Solaris administration by formatting my SPARC desktop and learned a bunch: How to download GNU packages and compile and install them. I learned grep and awk. These are things most people learned in college but I hadn't. Better late than never.

When I noticed a pattern of repetitive work, I turned my efforts to reducing labor and turnaround times. One example of this as a Web SE was customizing Visio templates to make diagram creation for custom web hosting quicker to produce and more consistent. There were really only a half-dozen variants. Create those and pretty them up once. Thereafter you're pretty much just adding the customer name to it.

I also implemented a crude PERL/CGI application for tracking interest in feature requests to provide feedback to product management. It was good times. But every job has it's downsides. The rub on being a Sales Engineer is that the more aggressive sales people will drop everything to get before some customers and I'd have to get on a plane or train with little notice. After that happened about twice, I decided it was time to get back to fundamentals: less sales, more engineering.

I approached the manager in charge of the network design team for hosting and colo to see if I could work on his team. He knew I didn't have a perfectly filled out background but he gave me the chance anyway.

As it turns out, this is an ideal hiring situation for the manager as well. As a manager, you generally want to hire someone you have already worked with because you have some idea of the kind of work they are capable of delivering. Having a rich connection with direct co-workers means that you can get honest and frank opinions on a person's character and willingness to invest and learn. It's pretty low risk compared to hiring an unknown from outside.

The Opportunity of Drudgery

Nearly all of my job transitions have been new niches at the edge of my previous jobs. In all of my jobs, I did not do well at them until I developed enough new skills that I was able to implement new systems to deal with the dull work.

I am beginning to suspect that there is something universal in this that can applied to developing a business as well. I have seen at least one school that teaches an entrepreneurial pattern that involves talking to business owners, coming to understand their problems, developing a wireframe/prototype, and enrolling the customer to pay for it as you develop it.

Here's what I notice: the methodology I just described takes full advantage of the type of work ethic I described above in the Paying Attention section. Only, instead of systematizing your own work, you start by getting in touch with people and probing them to describe the kinds of dull work or pain points they have so that you can systematize their problems into a software solution.

This is interesting for me to consider. It's something I could visualize for myself (and I imagine this is true for a lot of the people I know). I can imagine what gaps I would need to fill in my skillset to make it happen. Getting in front of potential clients isn't something into which many Engineer/Technician types have invested sufficient time.

I love this aspect of being able to visualize a potential future: Things which seem impossibly far, only have the chance to transition to possibly far when you start to map the way there.

I also love that you can do a lot of good by focusing on dull work. It's easy to want a job that is comfortable. And it's easy (or at least, common) to do that job without trying to improve the way that it's done. What's less easy and more rewarding is to develop new ways to get the job done that reduce labor, that improve delivery time, or consistency, or with fewer errors.

Once again: In business, the opportunity is found in the drudgery provided that you perform the work with the best attitude you can muster AND you pay attention.

Inspiration

I think I could love the idea of a small software company that wasn't trying to become a Unicorn. It would solve a specific kind problem for a number of clients and would be able to function even if we didn't all work all the time.

This post was inspired when I read "Million Dollar Products" by Kyle Neath. It gives me a tiny bit of hope and bit of being able to imagine a future tech company that I start with friends so that we can do something meaningful.

Bicycle Maintenance and Loss of Sleep to Smoke Detectors

This weekend I lost a bit of sleep to some false alarms from the smoke detectors in the house. They went off a 0400 two nights ago.

I decided I'd head to the Home Depot to replace them today. And I decided I would bicycle. Get some exercise.

My bicycle has been locked to the front patio for about 2 years and has a lot of rust and pollen on it. The tires were both flat. Every surface was covered in grime.

I set to cleaning it. Water and paper towels for most of the work. I used the only pump I have: a powered compressor that runs off of my car's 12V system. I used an old can of chain wax that Liz had from motorcycling to lubricate the chain and sprockets.

My bicycle now looks clean and is definitely still servicable. (I wish I had taken before/after pictures. Something I will have to remember for next time.)

I am proud of getting my bicycle in working order once again. It's a tiny bit of practice of living up to my renaissance ideal of becoming skilled in as many areas as I can.

At the Home Depot, I selected a replacement Smoke detector similar to the i2040 model that I had just removed. The Kidde FireX p12040 looks substantially similar but uses photoelectric sensing rather than ionization. To my delight, I was able to use the existing mounts and harnesses.

Hopefully this will reduce the number of false alarms, for a while at least.

I'm also proud that I did not just order something from Amazon this time. I suspect I will be doing this less and less as I try to re-orient my life from being a worker and consumer toward the life of a polymath craftsman.

Beware of Deals: Altucher Newsletter Silent Auto Renewal

Found today while looking at my credit card bill: a $79 charge to jamesaltucher.com.

It apparently came from what I thought was a $20 deal I purchased on AppSumo. And thanks to this deal, I am have decided that I can no longer trust AppSumo or Altucher.

I have searched my inbox and I see no e-mail from Altucher indicating pending renewal, nor that a renewal charge has occurred. This is strange, because they have my e-mail address.

This is a huge breach of trust and transparency by Altucher. This is a moral equivalent of 1-900 number. It is an underhanded tactic of getting monthly-recurring charges from a lot of people.

Question to James: Do you know this is going on? Do you care what happens in your name? Do you know that you're a crook if you're doing this on purpose hoping that people just forget they're paying you yearly?

I have written Altucher's customer service requesting a refund and cancellation of my account. On Monday, I intend to dispute the charges with my credit card if I haven't heard back from their customer service. I'll update with status here on the outcome.

Status

6/27/2016 - I have received a prompt response and I can confirm they have a very liberal refund policy, which I appreciate.

Thank you for contacting Choose Yourself Media customer support.

In line with our no-questions asked guarantee, your subscription to The Altucher Report has been cancelled and we have processed your $79 refund. Please allow 5-7 business days for the payment to show in your account.

Complex and Simple: Immigration and Economy

As we consider the referendum in the UK on whether to leave the European Union, let's consider a couple of definitions:

Definitions

Complex, adjective

  1. composed of many interconnected parts; compound; composite: a complex highway system.
  2. characterized by a very complicated or involved arrangement of parts, units, etc.: complex machinery

1: adjective 1. composed of many interconnected parts; compound; composite: a complex highway system. 2. characterized by a very complicated or involved arrangement of parts, units, etc.: complex machinery.

Simple, adjective

  1. easy to understand, deal with, use, etc.: a simple matter; simple tools
  2. not elaborate or artificial; plain: a simple style
  3. not ornate or luxurious; unadorned: a simple gown
  4. unaffected; unassuming; modest: a simple manner
  5. not complicated: a simple design
  6. not complex or compound; single.

As an Engineer, looking at things as systems, my mind hones in on interconnectedness. Simple means independent and not interconnected. And Complex denotes interconnected and intertwined.

Immigration and Economy: Intertwined

Some people assert that the Brexit referendum is about immigration and xenophobia, not economics:

Others make strong arguments that it's about the economy and sovereignty.

I observe that I couldn't find any pure articles containing only economic arguments for leaving. Thus, I suspect that the voices talking about economic reasons tend to be the more rational side of this debate.

Also found on the side of the discussion in favor of leaving, are charicatures of xenophobic white people written by their detractors. I have no opinion on whether this is true, who is right, and who is wrong.

I tend to notice the complexity of the discussion. Economics and immigration will always be complex/intertwined so long as you have a Welfare State. With a welfare state in place, there isn't a way to talk about immigration that doesn't include consideration for people who intend to immigrate and to contribute nothing to the society.

Even if used your imagination to remove the welfare state from the picture completely, for example by denying welfare benefits to new immigrants, the governemnt would still have a lot to figure out. For consideration: what happens to an immigrant fails to thrive? Homeless people, whether citizens or not, tend to become something the government has to deal with.

Do we expect that immigrants that left everything behind are able to stand up and trive immediately in a country where they may not speak the language? It's not likely. I can tell you for certain that my family benefitted from foodstamp programs for some part of the time my parents were trying to figure out their new life in America after fleeing a Vietnam that had recently fallen to the communists.

My little thought experiment suggests to me that immigration is untetherable from economics no matter how we slice it. Because being in a country and trying to live means being an actor in the economy. But that doesn't mean that a Welfare State has no role in xenophobia. I still maintain that it makes the situation worse.

Selection for Desirable Traits

The first chapters of Ender in Exile, by Orson Scott Card include an e-mail epigraph discussing trait selection in space colonization efforts:

"...as history shows us, when colonization is voluntary, people will self-select better than any system.

It's like those foolish attempts to control immigration to America based on the traits that were deemed desirable, when in fact the only trait that defines Americans historically us 'descended from somebody willing to give up everything to live there'...

Willingness is the single most important test..."

Contrast that with this visual:

"Make America White Again," says the billboard of a restaurant-owner in Tenessee which lays bare the entitled attitudes of some people who don't seem to understand this: just because you were lucky enough to be born on the right bit of soil doesn't make you any more deserving to be here than a person that left everything they owned behind for a chance to live in freedom. You may have a right to be here, but whether you morally deserve it or not is up to you (and we are not impressed).

The essence of the United States of America ought to be the spirit that created it: Liberty. We couldn't have it where we were born so we came here to bring it into existence.

The people who fight tooth-and-nail to get here deserve a chance to try to make their lives work here. What if we let in anyone who wanted to come from anywhere so long as they didn't come here to be a drain? I think this would be easier if we didn't try to make the government into this entity that is supposed to take care of us all.

The government cannot simultaneously be the protector of liberty and the coercive tax-collector for handouts. Giving euphemistic names such as "social contract" and "social safety net" doesn't change the coercive nature of it. You don't pay taxes, you go to jail. You don't like the recent tax hikes? Pay for a lobbyist.

This isn't the essence of America. It is a perversion of it.

So what would be more consistent? Essentialize the government to the protection of rights and minimal administration. Move ALL of the welfare programs into private not-for-profit concerns that are voluntarily funded.

Then maybe, we would have a shot at being able to say to the world with a straight face:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Try reading that aloud, by the way. They are some powerful words.

Tyranny: "cruel and oppressive government or rule."

Tyranny:

"cruel and oppressive government or rule."

The opposite of a "Live and Let Live" philosophy is one of tyranny. Tyrants rarely include "tyrant" in their self-conception. They think they are doing good by changing the world according to some ideal. But neither "the greater good" nor some idea of "the will of God" transforms tyranny into liberty. Oppression can never be individual freedom.

When we consider the maxim that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", we should remember that both of the justifications itemized above are often used to force others to behave in certain ways. Entire countries have become enslaved by regimes expounding these exact justifications.

Organized religion tends toward tyranny unless specific effort is made to banish it. (Incidentally, this is true of organized government). You can see the difference between the ones that make the effort and the ones that do not. Consider the stark difference of modern day Buddhism as compared to the Roman Catholic Church of the middle ages.

Political Islam, also known as Islamism, makes no effort to banish tyranny. Neither does certain variants of American Christianity. They are the forward deployments of the forces of tyranny.

They deserve our rebuke and our material opposition. These are the enemies of liberty until they work to banish every vestige of Tyranny from their ethos.

s/Islam Is (No){0,1} Religion of Peace/Stop Arguing About What Islam Is/

If you've read my thoughts on the meaninglessness of labels such as ‪#‎Islam‬, you can see through the fog of war: Islam isn't one big monolithic thing and to say "Islam means Peace" is a meaningless subterfuge about nothing in particular.

Because of my unusual ideas about labels, I find a title such as Gay Muslim: Islam Is No Religion of Peace to be guilty of inviting the wrong kind of conversation. The article is a good read, by the way. More reinforcement that Islam is a manifold of subcultures trying to find their way in the world. But the gay subculture stands in stark contrast to outsider notions of how conservative the religion looks on average.

The article also reinforces this: Ideas Kill. Not directly, but by the people who act because they are emboldened by them. Self-loathing and mortal sin, combined with a few carefully placed notions of what it takes to achieve redemption seems to be particularly deadly in consequence.

It still comes down to this for me. If I view adoption of some dangerous ideas as a problem inherent with Islam, I feel like there's some panel I have to take it to for approval. I have no standing to challenge Islam nor any standing to ask Muslims to reject things they consider their identity. No way in. Access denied.

But I don't view it like that. My view is that there are bad ideas in the Muslim zeitgeist and some that have demonstrably bad outcomes. And we don't have to ask people to reject their identities to challenge some of their notions. Identities can be revised and refined and essentialized. If enough people who call themselves Muslims reject an idea, value, or custom, then the definition of muslim changes. End of story.

Now... If we as non-Muslims are moved to try to take down the bad ideas, "Us. Vs. Them" isn't going to work.

How do we influence the other whom we hold in judgment?

Answer: We don't even try. Judgment is final.

But, say instead... I view my brother as mistaken: overtaken by a bad idea that he is acting to perpetuate and spread... do I then see an opportunity to share a different way of seeing things? Possibilities abound.

References

Sects and Violence — Francis Luong

Gay Muslim: Islam Is No Religion of Peace - The Daily Beast