September 26, 2025

The Wheels on the Bus

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2 hours 14 minutes

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Wheels_on_the_Bus.jpg

Episode Transcript

there I'm Scott and this is Tangents.

Well it is the 26th of I was going to say

February I don't know why.

I'm looking at my the date in my Mac and it says

Friday 26.

I don't know why.

I don't know why I have it set in English.

I usually

have it in French or Japanese or something for some reason.

I think I know

what happened.

I changed it to English and I never changed it back but anyway it

is Friday not February.

The 26th of September 2025 a minute in wasted on

that.

So I am sitting in a hotel in Tempea, Arizona which is kind of where I've

spent a lot maybe even most of my life not in the hotel but in Tempea.

If I was

going to live in Arizona I don't know that I'd want to be in Tempea

specifically but it is one of the nicer parts but at the same time yeah

I've got some mixed feelings and so I'm going to I have a few things I want to

talk about and then I have kind of an ex-temporaneous shall we say exercise

that I want to do.

So I'm going to kind of jump into it.

I came here well I

flew back from Tokyo about a week ago.

I guess a week ago Sunday.

Today is a

Friday.

So five days ago and that was an LA.

I stayed with my mom and sister for

a couple days.

I like three nights and then Futa Phoenix and I came here for a

couple reasons.

I'm seeing some people and hanging out with some people and

also kind of more importantly there was Arizona Board of Regents meeting.

Yesterday morning in Flagstaff and I wanted to go to that and in going to that well

I should probably give some context for that.

Basically I've been working with

the Union United Campus Workers, the Campus Workers United, you know the

Campus Workers I believe.

Arizona for a couple years maybe three years I don't

even have I've lost track it's probably closer to three.

I've always been

kind of Union curious but I've never been a Union member until my last job and

I will say like even I've had a mix of jobs and employers and I never really

felt like the need exactly for a Union but I always felt like organized labor

was a good and important thing that I wanted to be involved in and I found out

I don't remember what prompted me to look for it.

It was probably annoying with my

boss but whatever it was I found out the ASU and all of the state universities

have a Union and this Union was it's kind of nascent it's not they call it

a pre-majority Union so I don't know what the actual numbers are but it doesn't

have the majority of the faculty staff and student workers but as a decent

number and they're pretty engaged politically I have a lot of issues that I

really care about and for a very long time I've been like it just to be clear

I'm not like saying that electoral politics is not something that is worth

engaging in at all although I have very big misgivings about it especially

given the duopoly and the whole I've talked about those things a lot in other

episodes I'm not gonna delve into it but I'm not really that invested in it

I generally I vote every major election and I look at that as kind of like

such a minimal basic thing I don't really consider it any kind of

activism at all and I've been very interested in trying other other

avenues whether they're organization especially for like reproductive rights

you know but the better social issues medicare for all or better is my

preference really and I've been looking at it organization outside of a

electoralism so the union was a big place for that and there are a bunch of

things that are kind of badly fucked up in Arizona and one of these is that

they're currently wasting like a billion dollars plus a year on vouchers for

private schools and these things like they they originally kind of started

out with semi good intentions which were if your public school didn't have

the ability to support especially the students then you could use these to get

the care that they needed I think this was even from its inception a terrible

idea because what you should do and what should be obvious here is if the

school doesn't have the ability to support those needs they should support

those needs they should develop that ability that is that's that's the whole

fucking way public school should work public resources should work that way

public services the way people have twisted these ideas to to be like oh well

the post office has is losing money they're not making they're not a

fucking business they're not they're a public service they're an essential

very important public service they're not meant to be making fucking money it's

not like the goal it shouldn't be the you know the street lamps or the sidewalk

or the open roads are not meant to make money it's it's a basic service we

invest in collectively and it makes things better for all of us and they're not

their public goods but I don't even want to get into the details but

basically these are things that we should just be doing public education high

quality public education is one of those things now I do have misgivings

about some of the ways that it's used for propaganda especially like I've

been talking about this a lot and thinking about it a lot lately but in K through

12 I went to public school and in K through 12 I don't know it was every year

but feels like basically every year at least for a little bit and often

for probably like longer than any other subject about a dozen times order of

we covered the foundational myths of the United States the same Revolutionary

war bullshit which is interesting given the Kirk stuff because people are like

oh political violence has no I don't even want to get back into the Kirk's

stuff but it's kind of funny seeing all these people especially people who I

know are like huge fans of Hamilton which I also I've had a very big flip on

that I used to like it a lot and now I think oh this is just sort of rebranding

and whitewashing interestingly enough in black faces not black face but

actual black faces whitewashing of racism and child slavery and a lot of

horrible shit that the the air quotes founders were engaged in but again

never mind that now people who I know like that stuff and they're familiar with it

they're not like they know about the Revolutionary War and all this talking

about like political violence has no place what the fuck country do you

yeah and I'm not even saying you'd have to get involved or understand like

all the wars often wars that are not called wars that the US has been

engaged in but just the fucking Revolution like how do you not know about that

how do you not know about like how we have the weekend and it is just ridiculous

it's just completely ridiculous and I think like between mass of amounts of

ignorance and active I don't think that people are necessarily doing it on

purpose but they've definitely been disinformed they've definitely been

propagandized and they're repeating that and so it's it's funny although

and they sort of disturbing way to see people just sort of going like oh well

there's no why would you ever you know it's it's a little anyway I don't want

to get into that now eight minutes then but I kind of get to get to get more

to the crux one of the things that my union has been doing and I didn't go

yesterday in the capacity of a union member in fact I'm I can't remember what

it's called exactly but I'm no longer employed by ASU so I'm no longer an

official union member I'm like a community supporter or something I still

pay dues at least or I will until I run out of money but I'm not like a I'm not a

union member exactly I can't vote so but I do participate we've been going to

these Board of Regents meetings for almost as long as I've been a member I

think the union has they're started one or two times before I started but

they've been doing this and in the Board of Regents meetings they have a

public comment period and the public comment period actually jumping back

to the the vouchers and things just to put a cap on that before I get back to

this they have gradually expanded this stuff and are now again over a billion

dollars a year and it's going to public you're not the public schools it's

going to private schools often with totally different standards often religious

schools almost always to people who like the the vouchers do not cover the

full tuition so it is not something where like anyone is able to get in and

also these schools just to sort of juice their numbers they very selectively

pick and choose their students so the public schools have to teach everybody

which means that if you look at the metrics they're not going to be great

often but if you're able to pick like the air quotes best students then when

you do that you go in and now you get you know high test scores or you know

high college admissions or whatever metric you want to look at they look

good so it looks like they're successful but it's kind of a causation correlation

thing it's like well if we pick the top performers they happen to perform better

than most people that's you know it's it's very circular but people don't really

understand statistics don't really understand causation cause and effect or any

of this kind of stuff so anyway getting back to the board of regions I don't

want to someday I have to do an episode just completely on that because it's it's a

giant cluster fuck and it's so incestuous like there are so many people

Republicans in the state legislature and I don't want to I don't want to let the

Democrats off here because the Democrats started this shit and they keep

voting for it and expanding it and it's very bad and you know it's definitely not

one particular party at fault here but in particular there are a couple maybe

a few Republicans in the state legislature who also own these charter

schools or private schools whatever the fuck they're called and they collect

millions of dollars of public state funds from these things and enrich themselves

with it and it's really you know like so many things in government I mean I

always talk about Pelosi I talk about her specifically because A she's

particularly agrieges and B I don't want people to just think oh you're just

shitting on Trump because Trump is very open about his corruption and all

of this kind of stuff but you know A it's bipartisan B it's not new and C you

know people like Pelosi doing this shit have established that nobody's good

nobody's doing the avoid even the appearance of them for priority thing

which everybody should be doing and so because of that because of that we end up

having this situation where people like Trump could come in and say well you know

or either he's saying it or implying it and people are saying this about it but

they can sort of say well you know he's corrupt and all this stuff but he's

just doing what everybody does but doing it openly and he's not lying

about it which is kind of true if you have no concept of scale or degree like

he is kind of doing the same stuff and it's I really do fault the Democrats

for this because if you avoid even the appearance of him for priority you have

a moral high ground to stand for him to criticize people who absolutely do not

and I would say yeah these doing orders of magnitude worse but then we're

doing bad enough stuff that it's easy to understand why a lot of people look

at them and they don't really see much of a difference especially if they're

not paying that much of a very much attention and especially because like I'm

not gonna defend I keep coming back to Pelosi she's not the only one a whole

bunch of fucking people in Congress who engage in open insider trading I'm

both parties yeah it's it's it's just disgusting anyway to the to the

board of regents who also do by the way this kind of same kind of stuff at

least one of the regents owns property was just talking with somebody about

this yesterday owns property around the U of A and Tucson and is renting

a student that exorbitant raids and is also deciding like things about on campus

housing and what people can do and how the the number of conflicts of

interests like just open brazen conflicts of interests people have everywhere

and every organization in politics today and business is just fucking wild and

it's you know it's no wonder people don't trust anything because it's just

untrustworthy you'd be kind of silly and foolish to trust these people but the

board of regents they're picked by the governor and then there's an approval

process and all of this but basically their political appointees by the

governor they have a certain fixed-links term I think they can be re-appointed or

I'm not exactly sure all the details but basically they come in and some of them

have been there for a long time some of them last and some of them are like old

Democrat appointees some of them are new Democrat appointees some of them are

Republican appointees the newest one they were talking about yesterday and

bragging about was Jimmy McCain John McCain's son who incidentally I just

to vent a little bit here I don't know his current registration but I assume

Democrat at least was registered Democrat for a while but prior to that he was

an independent or an Arizona snow party preference and then prior to that he

was a Republican and this is one of these things I get very in-sense about

because the Democratic Party you have you have all these people who ruined

their party destroyed their Republican party to the point you know like they

their rock stars they went to a fucking hotel destroyed their room and they

did it to the point where they had to leave it themselves like they could not

any longer stomach being associated with that party they fucked it up that

badly and then they come into the Democrats and not only with open arms are

welcomed in and they're not on like probation they're not sold you know

like you can sit here with us but you know your your voice is going to be

diminished they're getting to dictate things like policy positions they're

getting pandered to like these are people who are politically homeless and then

you have this party who they've joined into that has made itself I mean I don't

even think you can call it a big tent because the tent is now excluding people

like me people like me who have these ridiculous obscene ideas like immigration

should be fairly stand very fairly easy you should like maybe maybe there's

some threshold to it but basically if you want to come into this country and

work here you should be able to just like my grandfather did it should not be a

big deal if you get sick there should be health care for you like a real

country the cities should be walkable the cities should have you know they should

be accessible as well like if you are a wheelchair user you should be able to

get around to see you should be able to have public transit that is good and

worth the damn which I'm going to get to in a little bit just basic shit

right stuff that other countries enjoy and if you travel around the world just a

little bit you go to actual developed countries and I like I see a lot of

people say like the the US is the only developed country that I don't consider

this country to be a developed country and I don't say that just to be provocative

or as an exaggeration I think if you make a list of fairly basic standards that

I would consider just basic requirements for being a developed country like you

should be able to get any job and if you're in that job and you're working you

should definitely be able to get housing and eat and be okay and when I say

housing I don't mean like you know you have a closet someplace where you have to

have five roommates I mean you should be able to get like at least a private little

studio apartment personally I think housing is a human right this is another

thing I don't think I don't think it should be required that you work to get

that it should be decoupled from it but definitely if you are working it's

indefensible to be working and still have to be homeless that is

fucking disgusting you should be able to get education for free and when I say

education for free I and a high quality as well not just like you know you can

get kind of like make shift shotty garbage I mean basically like K through

12 plus university plus graduate school as far as you want to go whatever

terminal degree you want or continue indefinitely you should be able to do

that and not end up with a fuckload of student loans you should be able to get

sick and get the health care you need if you get in a crash or your kid gets

cancer that should not financially destroy you and you're legacy yeah there

are basic things that I would say are requirements for being a developed

country and I don't think like and I'm not just trying to make a list I just

want to be clear I'm like I'm not trying to just sit on this country if I made a

list completely on the abstract of things that I think really make you

qualify as a developed country I don't think this country you should be able

to turn on the tap and drink the water and not worry about it that's a requirement

for a developed country you know like basic basic shit and this country does

not qualify you should be able to walk around or go to school or go to a

fucking concert and not have to worry about getting shot that is a basic

hard- pardon me requirement for being a developed country and you just go through

the fucking list and I just don't think we qualify I don't think I don't think we

can qualify and I'm going to talk about the public transit specifically in a

bit which is how I got to well how I got up to the flag staff yesterday or two

days ago but I want to go through the Board of Regents meeting a little bit

first so we get the Board of Regents have been going to these meetings and been

talking to them these are these are full of assholes they're all when you

actually look at who these people are they're basically people who just

donated to the governors and then as kind of like a thank you bought their seats

they got their nominations in exchange well I mean you know is there a

quick pro quo I don't know but you have to be kind of silly to think and

hot these are people that make a donation yeah you may again I know correlation

does not equal causation but you make a huge donation and then you get an

appointment and they happen in that sequence is not like you got the

appointment then you make the donation although even then you could coordinate

yeah it doesn't necessarily require like that there could still be causation

but you've flipped the apparent sort of order of things but anyway that is a

that is a thing to me that it's pretty fucking disgusting they should not be

political appointees they shouldn't be people who bought their seats and they're

all assholes they're all fucking horrible people and getting to the Jimmy

Kane guy he is now I think a Democrat but he's basically a you know older like

not unreasonable and I mean you can't see me I'm not on video but I'm making giant

air quotes when I say not unreasonable Republican you know he's a guy who is

sort of like you know like his his like his dad a little bit you know not like

the current crystal fascists white nationalist just openly horrible people and

I do want to say like you know I've talked to a lot of Republicans a lot of the

people when you start because I keep seeing people think like oh well Trump is

so unpopular and they don't like Trump and blah blah blah if you actually talk

to Republicans and I'm not I'm painting with a broad brush anytime I paint with

a broad brush understand I'm not saying like every single Republican this but

by and large if you talk to Republicans who say you know whether they're

never never Trumpers and begin giant air quotes or they're just air quotes

regular Republicans you talk to them and they will tell you they don't like

Trump they'll tell you they you know they of course they had to vote for him

because this is not me but they thought that Biden or Harris was a

comedy which is fucking ridiculous here is incidentally who just called

Trump a communist to keep their dictator like the people throw away around this

fucking word in this country like I I'm not saying communism is great I have

complicated feelings about it but the way people have no fucking concept either

either have no concept or they're deliberately maligning the term now it is

it's just wild it's just fucking wild the idea that a fascist is like it's

fucking ridiculous but anyway you know they couldn't vote for Biden or

Harris because they're a comedy they're they're socialist and the thing is

like these are fucking if you put them on an absolute multi-dimensional

political scale they are sort of Reagan the era of Republicans like they're

there are people who would have fit very well in the Republican party of the

1980s they would have been like just at home there and which is weird

because Biden of course has been a Democrat since the set well I guess

probably it's whole life but he's been a Democratic senator sitting and the

active politician for a very long time before Reagan so anyway getting through

Board of Regions giant assholes I I really do not think that they should be

political appointees they should be if you gave me my drillers I can snap my

fingers and change things they should be appointed by and removable by the sort

shared governance with the universities by which I mean the the students the

faculty the staff debatably the community should all have their own when I say

community I mean community members that are not necessarily affiliated with the

university they could be alumnus or alumni or just people who live in Tucson for

you a bear people who live in Tempe for ASU or people who live around the

state maybe you just have one whole community one for the whole state and then

you have the three I think that's what I would do you have the three for each

university but either way each of these should have their own sort of

Congress they they have some kind of government for these but it should be

probably refined a little bit and actually have some real power and they should

get to pick the region regions they should also have a way to remove the

regions yeah maybe it takes a two thirds supermajority or something but they

should have like an impeachment process so they they could do that and then the

regions answer to them rather than you know whatever their interests are and it's

kind of funny because the the previous chair who stepped down recently I don't

know why she stepped down but she's she's no longer chair she has a defense

contracting company and basically I don't think it's exactly an exaggeration

to say that she traffics weapons like truly maybe she's you know doing logistics

that are not exactly weapons but she's definitely weapons adjacent if you

want to be really generous to her and probably also traffics weapons just straight

up the current guy is a tobacco lobbyist I mean you know like it is just like

if you if you wanted to find like a fucking evil bastard he was a tobacco lobbyist

he got drummed out of McCain I wasn't present enough in this meeting to

put this into my little speech but he got drummed out of McCain Jimmy McCain's

dad's presidential campaign for representing a huta and Myanmar there's a

dude there who is like a drum pusher I do just they're horrible people they're

generally fucking horrible people the best people on that board are she and then

there are student members but they have this thing where they can't vote for

like a year or two and it's it's a very convoluted in fucked up it's not it's

not at all a democratic thing and they get to make decisions on the future

course of university education in this state and one of the decisions that

they're making and generally you know I mean they get to pick the university

presidents for example who they do this you know they they have a bunch of

assholes like crow who are just terrible fucking people and again they're not

like crow should not be running shit definitely shouldn't be running the

university definitely shouldn't it like there should be fucking term limits I

think too like he's been the president of ASU I think since before I started

graduate school I don't even remember when is when he started but it's it's now

2025 and I'm you know I'm not old but I'm not that young and he's been

president for a long time and I think it's like yeah you're done just fucking

go let's replace you and let's not replace you by doing like a nationwide

search and finding some other horrible asshole to the sit and you see let's

let's do it like if if given my brothers it would be somebody who comes from

not necessarily a faculty member for the university although I think that would

be the right choice but it should be someone that the again students

faculty and staff of the university get to pick and and the regions should

vet and all of that kind of stuff and again the regions picked by and

removable by the students faculty and staff in their sonnets and their

house or whatever the whatever the representative structure is but anyway I

went there and this is this is the the little two-minute public comment I

gave I should say I was kind of shocked that they let me talk because the last

public comment first off I said fuck a couple times maybe like I am so

tired of you fucking assholes or something like that so I would have understood

if they didn't let me go and I also I had a speech prepared last time but I

got I get so fucking incensed like I got up there my eyes rolled back and I was

just talking and I actually get a video of that if it's available someplace but

it was it was fucking annoying I'm so sick of these people and so I was kind

of expecting them to not let me talk again and they do have an official rule

that like if you talked in the last six months then you know we're gonna we

might not let you talk again is like the so this was less than six months ago

and they also have yeah anyway they had another person who came after me

who basically like filibuster the thing and I had mixed feelings on that but

it was it was nice it was fun I enjoyed it but I know it's also like

antagonizing these people who are again assholes and today yesterday

yesterday morning they had this video which I should put a clip of it in

here although you don't need to see it but it was like the before you're flying

on a plane kind of video they made and they're explaining what their policies are

what their procedure is and how they're picking the speakers and it really like

as I'm watching this I'm sitting there going like there's no fucking way

they're gonna let me talk there's just no way but they did they let me talk

to their credit they also there were a bunch of unite here I think they're

unite here local 11 members who are the sort of like hospitality worker

at the universities who incidentally you know like as bad as it is for

faculty and staff they they these have this hospitality workers I guess

actually you should have students faculty staff and hospitality workers or

whatever the although to me that should be in staff whatever they are they

should be represented as well in the board of regions but again you're

everyone who works for the university works with the university has

a vested interest in the university and I don't mean like the businesses although

if you again if you want maybe we have a community thing that they can

kind of get you know but easily overruled but they can kind of get a voice or

they get a region to the whole state yeah people representation they just

don't let them dictate fucking everything it's all I'm saying so anyway

and incidentally that it gets the last thing is they're they're doing a

bunch of shit to basically make the universities in Arizona sort of wings of

like defense contractors they're basically trying to make them R&D wings for

Northrop Grumman and for Raytheon and all these kinds of things pretty fucking

gross to me I don't think it's something that that should be that way so this is

the thing I I spoke about again I hope the hospitality workers get a better

contract because they like these are people they don't have benefits they don't

have you know they're they're living on a nine-month contract and then they

have to get like financial assistance like basically food stamps and kind of

stuff for the the gap they don't have enough money to cover rent they're not

getting paid fucking anything like the well paid ones again in your quotes

are getting paid less than 20 bucks an hour and most of them are getting paid

minimum wage it's it's just a fucked-up situation again with no benefits no

way to to deal with you know massive healthcare issues if they and I always

think about this like if if one of them had a detached rent now they'd be so

fucked they'd be so fucked because you know getting a vet for every

trectomy was not cheap getting the recovery for that was not easy or cheap

or quick and it just sucked it was very annoying I don't recommend it so

anyway rolling up I got there listen to everybody else talk and yeah I

they called me again kind of fucking amazed my performance now will probably

not be the same as it was then but it's not up yet I thought about actually

taking the audio clip from their stream but as of at least when I checked

last which is a little bit ago they wasn't there so they're probably editing

it and just you know doing whatever the which is kind of weird also because it

should be public record and it should just be up I don't think it was even

streaming yesterday but never mind that now this is what I said hi I did my

undergrad in PhD at ASU and Emma former employee I don't think that tobacco

lobbyists who sold cancer to kids and got kicked out of a presidential campaign

for representing a whom to in Myanmar or people whose company's traffic

weapons or drug pushers dressing up in suits pretending that they're

respectable and decent should be undemocraticly determining their direction of

higher education in this state simply because they donated to politicians and

bought their seats here on this board how many people have you indirectly murdered

it's staggering article 11 section six of the Arizona State Constitution says

the university and all other state educational institutions shall be open

to students of both sexes and instruction for anish chubby as nearly free

as possible that is your job here not to further enrich yourselves or your

oligarch benefactors or to turn our universities into R&D wings of the

military industrial complex my hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan

debt says you're doing a terrible job meanwhile you have ice terrorizing

students and your hosting visuals for disingenuous pseudo intellectual

photobader crystal fascist white nationalists who put your students at risk

got your professors assaulted and said innocent people getting shot and

killed this is his words not mine by the way was a fair price to pay and

worth it for our giant air quotes God given right to what I would characterize

as man-made point-and-click murder remotes great job you should all be ashamed

you should all be removed and replaced thank you so that was my that was my

speech from yesterday I don't know that it did anything I definitely do know

the one of the unite here guys afterwards said that it was a good speech you

appreciated it so I felt good for that I do feel like it's something that is kind

of worth yeah it's kind of worth going I don't feel bad about it it's one of

those things actually like there are things that I do where I feel like oh

that was kind of a waste or it was kind of not worth it this one I felt like

yeah as much of a pain in the ass as it was to get there and it was a pain in

the ass to get there and you know flying all the way back from Japan and

all those kind of stuff I didn't incidentally exactly plan my return to

coincide with that I just kind of knew how much money I had and where I was

gonna run out and I also wanted to be here because my mom's birthday my sister's

birthday and some other things are happening in October so you know I kind of

well I knew vaguely when I wanted to be back I picked the time I picked the day

based on almost nothing it was kind of random but some I coincidentally and

some I intentionally bad ended up being a couple days before or a few days

before the Board of Regents meeting and since that was the case I flew out to

Arizona then I planned that oh well back I flew out there Arizona and then I

you can't fly directly incidentally from LA to Flagstaff or I guess you can I could

fly myself because I'm a pilot required to mention that every part or at least every

episode I have to say I'm a pilot but I could fly myself if I spent like thousands

of dollars renting a fucking plane and never mind I'm current technically but I

am current instrument rated pilot technically but I'm also like I don't think

current enough I'm proficient enough that I would feel comfortable without without

some practice and without doing some stuff so I could do that or if you're

taking commercial flights there's just nothing the or maybe there was one and it

was like 400 bucks and it was a giant pain in the ass when I took was like a

Southwest flight who incidentally I should probably I'd like to phase out I'd

like to find somebody else but my mom and sister live really close to Burbank

Airport and LAX is a giant pain in the ass Burbank to Phoenix is pretty easy so

I did that and then you get the Phoenix and it's like how do you get from Phoenix

to Flagstaff and Phoenix to Flagstaff is like a two-hour drive maybe a little

bit more without traffic and it gets up a little bit closer to three hours with

traffic LA to Phoenix depending on how you're getting there and all that kind

of stuff it's like a six if you're driving a Tesla like a seven-hour drive

with the charging and yeah I just I was just again in Japan and I went from

Tokyo to Kyoto which is a rough order of magnitude comparable to the distance

between LA and Phoenix kind of coincidently but kind of not and you take

Shinkansen there and it costs less than a Southwest ticket there's no

security that you have to go through really it's pretty easy pretty comfortable

and you get on there and it's very quick and also this is very important

because they're building some high speed trail or high speed terrain high

speed trains in like LA to San Francisco and then LA to Vegas but you look at

the plans for those like the plans for these are basically like some place

that would take like an hour plus from where my mom and sister live in

North Hollywood just to get to the station to get the train to go to Vegas and I

think the San Francisco one is comparable like you should have a central

and peripheral stations around the city that are very quick and easy to get to

from anywhere in the city and then you get there and then you can take the high

speed train and also and like I don't know that their high speed trains are

actually like Shinkansen T-T-J-V-A Chinese high speed rail whatever those

trains are called I don't think they're the speed that compares to those but you

know again again they're kind of a thing that is improving I guess slightly

slowly over time in this country the the the contrast between that and like I

went to I went to China and I went from Beijing to Chengju

Chengju I don't know I'm probably I'm sure I'm watching that pronunciation

sorry Chengju I'm putting I'm putting in a different syllable letter that's

not actually it's like Chengju but also with it never mind I imagine I didn't

say that or imagine I said it correctly that's a fairly long train ride it was

like a six and a half hour train ride so you know longer than you probably would

want but still going 350 kilometers per hour on a lot of it and it was

an easy to get to the station it was pretty fucking cheap it was it was just

like such a delight versus being here and dealing with all the bullshit you

know you have to go through security is not that bad to be fair but you still

have to deal with it you get on the plane you have to get to the airport like at

least 50 minutes early probably and you get there and then I will I will say

this get to Phoenix Sky Harbor and you know you walk a little bit but then there's

the Sky train and the Sky train kind of almost like if you squint and use your

imagination a little bit feels like you're in a real country and then the

Sky train goes to a station for the the light rail which is not like a metro but

it's you know again also if you squint and really use your imagination you

can almost imagine it's like a real city and then you get that and if you're

just coming directly to any place on the light rail line it's not terrible like

it does again it feels vaguely reminiscent of a real city like it feels like

I might my thought there is basically like you get to order of 250 and

assuming Phoenix is still inhabitable assuming like things don't go cataclysmically

bad I kind of think that there will be actual like high maybe well I don't

know about high speed rail but there there will be friends and you know like

actual like a metro system the light rail will not be so ridiculously

confined like yeah the metro doesn't go to Scottsdale it doesn't go to Gilbert

and both of these cities are like highly opposed to it for no fucking reason other

than like well the their reason is basically purely racist and purely

anti homeless like they don't they don't want to let the poor people come into

their cities they don't want people who are not white to come into their cities

so they don't want the fucking trains and it's really fucking annoying and the

thing that's kind of disgusting about it is the way that the train is set up the

way that all of this stuff is managed the way the city is built and all of

these things if you go on the train there are a lot of fucking homeless people

because the city doesn't do anything like you do not support fucking homeless people you

don't have like they do have shelters and things kind of but they're mostly like private

and they're not adequate they don't have cheap to free housing they don't have like good

support they don't have like you should be able I have said this before but you should

legitimately just be able if you live in a city or even if you're visiting a city like

I know the hotel lobby would be fucking furious about this but you should be able to go to a

city any city any not just major city but basically any city and get a free room and

when I say free room I mean like literally a free room maybe if you want it's at a scale based

on income but I personally think it should be free and you go there and it should be clean

it should be well maintained it should be comfortable and you should be able to stay there as long

as you want and in that room you should have ideally it now maybe maybe you have a laundry

machine that's just in the facilities but ideally you have one in the room you certainly want to

have a shower comfortable bed basic supplies and you know I don't know have access to a kitchen

or something would be kind of nice and also I would I would say food is a human rights you should

have that as well and I mean restaurant lobby would probably not be super thrilled about that too

but yeah those are things that you should just have but it independent of that I came here

and the distance between Phoenix and Flagstaff so once you get here is such that at I don't remember

the exact number but action constant speed should take you know you're I mean you're not going

the high the full speed the max speed the whole time so to be fair it's not going to be 45 minutes or

whatever you would calculate if you just like whatever the distance is divided by 350 kilometers per hour

and I think it was about that but you know you'll you'll slow down you'll have some other

things in the end you might have a stop in between but when you add all that stuff and it should be

no more than an hour an hour and a half they get between here and Flagstaff and it should go maybe

not necessarily from city center to city center all it should but at least like from a place where

you're at a met like a transit station that lets you without walking along distance out and being

exposed and all this kind of stuff lets you just go to there's a dude walking around with an umbrella

that I swear he took off of a table some Flicks it's it's raining outside so I'm just watching

I said incidentally actually this is this is a side I have been opposed to umbrellas

basically my whole life I don't know what it was I just to like I hate the idea I don't like the idea

of carrying around something and this last time like when I I meant to mention this in a previous one

but either way I was in Kyoto and my friend who I was traveling with got an umbrella in Tokyo

and she was she brought it with and basically like then I didn't need a lot of persuasion but kind of

just light nudge plus seeing her have that umbrella got me to get one to try it out and it's so

fucking better it's so fucking better than like you know having a hat which is what I used to do

I mean first off if you have a hat I'm a person you know I'm not I'm not saying that I am

completely immune to social pressure by any means I feel it I feel like if I walk around the

Tokyo or Kyoto and I'm wearing a hat or wearing sunglasses I'm definitely

aware that some people are judging me like and I'm not just reading that in like I I'm good enough

at reading people and social cues I can see like you know walking down and you see someone's

looking at you and you just like and that that's super thrilled not that you know like anything that

I do is going to fit in perfectly there but I could feel it versus if I don't wear that I don't

feel it or I don't feel it for that reason but you know having having a hat

was a thing that I used to do and I always got annoyed with like baseball caps because they're

fucking worthless I don't understand you like they kind of I don't get me wrong I get that they look

cool just in the abstract but you know the sun and unless you're standing in one particular place

with the sun and one particular place you're constantly they're talking your head to rotate

the the bill of that thing so it's blocking the sun or you're rotating the hat and it's just like

such high effort to have that thing so I got like the hat with a brim that's like that far out

the goes all the way around because to me that's like it just makes it you know it looks

dark it looks darky I fully admit not like the I don't feel like super cool wearing it but that's

what I used to have and then I went even to step further and like you know I'd feel the sun

beating down on my neck and at a certain point I finally and I thought about this for years before I

did it but I finally got one of these hats that has that little flap that goes down your back so

it's got the full brim around it and that little flap and for years that was what I more and it's

actually pretty good like it does a pretty decent job of blocking the sun it's hands free which is a

big deal and the ones that I got I could fold up and stick in my pocket which is a huge deal for me

because I don't I don't want I don't like carrying around extra shit I definitely don't want to have

like a backpack or something that or a man bag a purse I don't I'm saying that the race of

we as a person is fine it's fine you can where wherever you want I don't want to carry around

stuff as I just don't and so you know putting it in my pocket it was kind of nice but the thing

had some problems so it would always like I would sweat especially being in Arizona and especially

like if I'm going hiking or something I would sweat and then the thing would get sweat stains didn't

help also that like you know with that sweat you get like a chromatography thing going on with

the sun block and it would just like draw it in there and then you'd have in addition to sweat

stains the sun block stains which would look like sweat stains but even worse and so it was kind

of I don't know what the fuck is going on there a bunch of but I don't know if the if you

heard it in the audio a cop car went by but there I can see the train tracks from here and

like four or five cops have just gone down that's weird something is going on anyway

if you hear something in you it's it's 15 to 41 as I'm recording this right now so

or maybe it's just random who knows um where was I oh yeah the hat so that that was a good thing

it was a nice thing that I used for a long time and I'm not saying that I'm done with the hats

but I finally got this fucking umbrella and I don't know why I was so opposed to the truly

and I will say they're not perfect like one big issue with umbrellas and one of the reasons that

I've resisted them is just wind they they require a certain amount of sailing

proficiency in order to carry them around when there's a little bit of wind and

sometimes the wind overpowers you then and sometimes you know I guess if it was a

optically clear but UV and infrared reflective umbrella it'd be better so you could see through it

and use it as a shield but like I was walking into the wind earlier today and I had to have the

umbrella straight in front of me and I kept checking to make sure that one was there but

it's not from just looking dorky you know it's hard to see it's not the

not the easiest thing to use not the cleanest thing to use but but

if there's no wind and you're using that for the sun it blocks the sun pretty well

the one that I have is UV opaque well you know I mean nothing is opaque opaque but you know

decently so it's like SPF 50 or something equivalent so basically the factor opaque it's

like the same that I'm using for sunblock or maybe I don't know exactly what it was but

it's pretty good and it's supposed to do the same for infrared it gets hot because it's black

but but still it's it's pretty nice and the big thing is you're not sweating into it

and the one that I have and this is kind of a key thing it folds up and I can stick it

it's a little bulky but I can fit it in a pocket and fitting it in a pocket again it means

the I can walk around and have that thing in there and I don't need to be carrying it around all

the time now when it's when it's out when it's deployed you do need you do need to have I'm just

looking at the water rushing into the storm's sewer and it's kind of almost hypnotic and there's

just a little river in this street in front of me almost take a picture of this I don't know that

this will be my image for the for the episode but I would kind of love to make it that if I could

although I'm looking at this and it's definitely not does not convey what I'm going for

but we'll see if I can if it works if you happen to see that and the the image for the thing

then you'll know that's what that's what it was but yeah the umbrella is pretty fucking nice

and for rain and again it's not perfect for rain you know it's very mask like in a sense that you know

it's decreasing the amount of rain that hits you but you're still getting wet especially if there's

some wind and it's often wind with the rain here in Arizona but it does a good job of keeping you

pretty dry and you know especially if it's just like dumping on you and not a lot of wind

the difference between walking around with that and walking around without it is like even with a rain

code on just night and day and the rain code I used to use but I never one day there will be

material that is actually good for raincoat and that material will have this thing that basically

it will breathe really well it will be a very waterproof it won't be like the durable water

resistant stuff that they have or Gore-Tex where you wear it and it's just like either washes off

or it just makes you fucking muggy like it you're just sweating under it it will be

comfortable it will be breathing and it will keep you dry and it will be light and just you know nice

if we didn't little criticism of capitalism that we haven't got that material yet but we will

we will have that material one day assuming society doesn't collapse before then in all of that kind

of stuff but it's an incidentally annoying thing that I find that just you know like Gore-Tex

was invented decades and decades ago and when it was invented it was a fucking cool thing but now

it's just embarrassing that that's almost the best thing that you have and it's it's just like

analgesics we have insides and then we have opiates for pen killers there should by now if you had the

research if you did the research right by now we would have figured out drugs that were anti-inflammatories

and basically had no side effects we would have figured out drugs that could kill pain but not really

anything else so you just feel normal but you wouldn't have the pain like it would just make you feel good

I mean I don't mean you've been actually making you feel good it just make you not feel bad you just feel

okay it wouldn't be like an opiate where it does make you feel good it would be more like oh I just

don't feel excruciating chronic pain and that should just exist that's something totally is doable

and if you spent probably like five to ten years researching it and had some of the doctors who

were now out of work doctors being PhDs we're now out of work doing research and they were funded

and all this by now we'd have we'd have those drugs we'd have a bunch of other drugs that would be

so much better and we don't because the financing system the funding system for academic research

is not great and then the incentives for like drug companies pharmaceutical companies are primarily

to you know find stuff that's off the shelf and package it get you know like patent protection

and just sell it at an exorbitant rate and they do that and that's where we are but there's not

really a really a good system for drug discovery and a lot of it yeah it's an interesting thing

because like if you talk to people that aren't familiar with this they feel like the drug companies

are actually doing that research but in reality and it's not to say that they don't do any research

they do some but in reality most of the new drugs that come out and again they're very limited number

are coming from universities and there are things like that Hep C drug that was bought for

billions of dollars and then they made that up because even though if they would have sold that

you know reasonable price they could have essentially eradicated Hep C they didn't want to do that

but they sold it at a ridiculous price per pill like thousands of dollars per pill and

you know you can get cured of Hep C if you're rich and if you're just a plebian then you can go

fuck yourself you can just have your liver just fuck off and die and and in fact other people in the

process rather than eradicating it which yeah it's just like the way the I know I come back to

capitalism a lot that the way that we organize society and everything we do and all this kind of stuff

is so fucked up and so needlessly bad it's just it's just disgusting so anyway rambling on

I really thought that by this point in the episode I would have gotten to my little

extemporaneous thing I won't get to that soon I think all the way I'm kind of winding down

we'll see if I have the the ganas to keep going but um I don't even know what I was talking about oh yeah

does the abore meeting and the way that I got there was there's notion constant there's no high

speed rail so I thought like okay I'm gonna see what the equivalent is what would you do

if you were somebody living in this country or visiting this country and you didn't want to

don't want to rent a car and I would really I am sure well I'm not sure that I'm going to

end up having a car again but I probably will end up having a car again one day I fucking hope not

I would love to not need one but I definitely for as long as I can I'm going to try to be places

where they're walkable and they have public transit because I'm just tired I'm like having a car

is such a ridiculous expense and the thing you know I mean it's it's like layers of commitment

of expense and it is one of these things also that like locks you into a minimal monthly

burn rate that is it like even if you that I get really fucking annoyed with a lot of apple stuff

and one of one of the things sorry for the drawing change but one of the fucking things that really

irritates me a lot is just the the way that audio is managed just in general um but I I don't know

how this happened I have had the alerts like emergency alerts and all that stuff turned off on my

phone for a long time and I maybe I turned them back on but I think that it turned it back on for

me at some point I know first of all that like actually the amber alerts were turned on

I I don't give a shit about those and I know you know like generally speaking those are like

one of the parents kidnapped their kid I don't need those alerts and it's also like it's not actionable

it's basically I put it in the category of sort of between copaganda and just like straight up

propaganda like once to make people feel like things are really dangerous and scary and so they

send you these alerts that you can't do anything about it's not like you're gonna get the alert

and then walk down the street and see a kid yeah you know it's just it's mostly just so that you

can be like scared so that you can just like ask you to have the ask you police they send you messages

and it's like oh there's somebody scary on campus doing something and that actually usually

actually doing something but just you know like we saw this suspicious character on and then they

hours later say things are okay like all clear but anyway I turn these things off they were back

on and I'm using my AirPods to record this I still need to do something better than that because

you can hear the audio is not great with these but there's something that I have with me

and they're easy and then oh all these things I've got it connected to my computer and for some

fucking reason there's an emergency national weather service store morning thing for some fucking

reason alert came through on my phone bonus vibrating and it overtook the AirPods that were connected

to my Mac and brought them over to the fucking phone so while I was while I was recording and so

I had the alert screaming in my ears which thank you Apple and also it interrupted my flow and

interrupted the little thing just fucking irritating also also also as long as I'm talking about

those one thing that irritates the shit out of me aside from the fact that I can I I have not been

able to turn and I'm a fairly technical person I'm I say that with you know a little bit of

humility but also like I'm pretty fucking technically capable like I can make computers do what I want

pretty easily I can talk to them pretty easily all this kind of stuff I have not been able

since I got or since they got rid of the analog headphone jack and analog dial to control volume

I have not been able to have the volume on my fucking headphones my AirPods or whatever the

you know whatever I've been using I've not been able to have that down to a comfortable level like

especially in a quiet room like in an noisy environment it it it it it turned it up a little bit

just to compensate for the noise incidentally they're also I feel like they're the equalization

on them is like big at the high end big at the low end and down in the middle which is like the

opposite of what I want because I don't want I want like voice to be enhanced I want to hear

very crispy and cleanly what people are saying and I don't want to hear all the background

bullshit as much you know not that stuff down give me the off anyway it's just irritating

because I think when that stuff is down you have to turn the thing up to compensate and then the

overall SPLs are just higher than you need and then you know you're doing hearing damage which

I'm sure I'm absolutely fucking sure these things are doing hearing damage and I have like I turn it

down to the very minimum level and on my Mac like I use the option shift volume down and I can

get it to a quarter of the normal volume down sort of scale and it's still too fucking loud and

a quiet room and then you take it one more notch and it's all the way off you know the fact that

they can't figure this shit out just irritates the fuck out of me and then on the iPhone you do that

too and you can drag it down with your hand instead of using the volume controls which is

really annoying and very touchy and then they turn the fucking volume back up like you're walking

around listening to a song or something and the song is it almost almost a comfortable level

but still too loud and then you start getting it louder and like you can just watch it go up and

it's like motherfucker I turned it down for a fucking reason I don't and the thing that's most annoying

about that is they have like they they do have like an auto level set thing for volume control

I have that disabled I turn that shit off and it still does this and I have a friend who is

prepared and like he needs the brightness all the way up just to just to see and the fucking

brightness auto adjusts itself down all the fucking time like you know let people control their

fucking devices it's it's really just irritating shit anyway anyway never mind to also the like often

um did just the last little complaint about this for now but the alert levels like

you have an alarm or something or a message and I would get like an incoming text sound

and things would be okay I keep my phone on silent now because of this but things would be like

at an okay level relatively speaking I'd have it down at the lowest level again and then all

of a sudden you get one and it's like excruciatingly loud like actually I'm not even exaggerating

I'm absolutely certain that this thing is causing hearing damage and you know it's just it fucking

pisses me off where was I anyway I I guess I get so distracted by this it's just just

irritates the shit out of me irritates the absolute everything fucking shit out of me and Apple

has like that they're doing this fucking Apple intelligence stuff I will believe you guys can do

some kind of Apple intelligence maybe if you ever figure out something as hard as volume control

and brightness control um you know like figure that shit out first make my calendar actually

sync and work like show me alerts that are notifying me about calendar invites and appointments

consistently and reliably because often I you know I've gotten months the get comes and goes

sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't but I've gotten months where no matter what I do

I would not get notifications for for kind of fucking calendar meetings and

you know I'd have to get a text message from somebody saying hey Scott are you coming to the zoom

is like what the what the fuck and then you look at the calendar and it's right there at the

there's an alert set for the moment of and for five minutes before or an hour before whatever

I didn't get any of the fucking alerts and it's just like figure out basic shit and then we can talk

figure out how to make maps work worth the damn like on the maps on both the phone and the

and the Mac if I search for something like I wherever I am I guess if you're staying in one place

it doesn't affect you that much but I've been traveling a bit right if I go into maps right now

and I type in coffee it looks for coffee in north Hollywood I'm in fucking to be like the very first

option like if I hit enter coffee in north Hollywood if I click the top one coffee in north Hollywood

not coffee nearby not coffee in the map region that I'm looking at it's just like the fact that they

can't do shit like this and I'm not I'm not talking about like really like subtle nuanced

tricky stuff I'm talking about just like basic everyday kind of shit that anyone using a Mac

would actually fucking want that would be you know figure that stuff out figure that stuff out

first so getting back to that if you have a car the minimum monthly burn rate that you have

with that car is such that you know like you you can't reduce your cost below a certain number

and maybe you have an older car that is paid for you still have insurance that you have to pay

for you still have basic maintenance that you have to pay for if you want the car to to last

and if it's an older car good luck not having it break down and good luck not having like some

some compressor or an alternator or whatever fails and it has to be replaced in a cost of

thousand bucks or the air conditioner breaks or whatever it is something breaks down on that car

and it takes maintenance and it's it's just a consistent continuous thing you don't have to be

in the situation I was in which I deeply regret and I'm glad to be fucking out of it but

I when I was getting paid a lot better I got a Tesla Model 3 and I very foolishly got a shorter

lease I don't know why I didn't just get the longest and not at least alone I got a shorter

loan because I wanted to pay it off more quickly and which would have been fine if I kept that

income it was not that big of an expense relatively speaking with the income that I had but then

I lost that job and then I didn't get paid for a year plus and then the job that I got

paid like a third of what I was getting prior and then it went from being like not that much money

relatively speaking to literally half of my paycheck like one of my paychecks was going to the car

for the eleven hundred per month for the loan and then like four hundred a month for the insurance

so like fifteen hundred a month was my take home on the paycheck one paycheck was going to that

another paycheck was going to rent and then what do I do for food what do I do for and yeah

like it's a real fucking problem it's a real annoying fucking problem and again you could get a

car that's cheaper than that but you have the new car and you have the fixed expenses for that

or you have an old car and then you have the random stochastic expenses that you never

can predict when they're going to come up and also are you going to be without a car like

Prunos what's going to happen is it going to be something that like even if you have the money for it

are you going to end up having to not have a car or have a rental for a week or two

I'd you know or somebody hits your car guy who knows what the fuck is going to happen

but it's it's really there was a thing on blue sky this morning somebody said like what are

your biggest complaints about or what is your biggest complaint about having a car or about cars

something like they're driving or something like that and I was very pleased to see like a good third of

the people who responded maybe it was a quarter but a huge chunk of the people that responded

all said you know we're upset because some some version of just driving like the fact that you can't

have a city where you could just not have a car and it's one of these things like if you live in

this country people have decided cars and cities that are built around cars are somehow freedom

but they are just a ball and chain that everybody is attached to and you know most people

especially people that are working they either have to have a car or if they can't afford a car

they have to convert like you know like in Phoenix there are buses but the frequency is very low

there's light rail but the frequency is very low and it doesn't go that many places

and if you live someplace and you need to get to and from work and you can't afford a car

the thing that you can do is like take buses and then you know maybe it takes an hour and a half

or two hours to get the work and two hours to get back home so that's an unpaid half of a day of work

potentially that you're spending dealing with transit you know it's fucking annoying and it's not

free either like it's not expensive expensive but if you're using the light rail twice a day

it's four bucks a day in a month that's like 60 bucks all right I can't even do the math

in a month I guess that would be four bucks a day five days a week so 20 bucks a week

times four so it's like 80 bucks in a month give or take and you can get like discounts and

things like this but it's still a decent expense just to do that and again the light rail is not

it's not very high frequency and it's not very fast like it goes from tempede to sort of

Mesa ish to downtown Phoenix to a little bit out and you go down to those distances and it's like

it takes as long as it takes to drive in a car even with you know if there's traffic maybe it's

cutting a little bit of time but it's also it's a light rail going through the roads so it has to

deal with traffic as the wait for stoplights and stuff like this it doesn't go very fast it's like

and it's it's only two cars which is weird it's compared to like being in Tokyo where you have

these trains that are racing through and they got a big fucking cars full of people and then you

have the light rail here and it's like two cars lumbering along they come every like 15 minutes there

it's like two minutes maybe if you're on a low frequency one it'll be like every five minutes

a train comes and it'll be six to eight cars at a there's plenty of space and if that one is full

wait another five minutes and there's another one or during rush hour wait a couple minutes two

three minutes and there's another one the difference is just wild it's just absolutely fucking wild and

you know again you have the shinkansen and this is the thing I wanted to talk about I still haven't

gotten to the extent for any of this thing I'm probably going to talk about that but we'll see

I got energized by my complain about the AirPods and the fucking notification

almost all these notifications too like I do think that the emergency weather alert or

like if something serious is happening I'd kind of like to know but I don't want my phone to be

screaming at me I don't want to just take over the AirPods and scream at night ears and interrupt

my recording I'd like to just have like a little notification and see it but anyway um yeah I

wanted to see what you would do if you're trying to take like a reasonable sort of equivalent of train

and there is a train incidentally that goes from LA to flag stuff but it's like a 12 and a

half hour train ride it's like you know I just I can't I can't can they how ridiculously slow

that is and and of course also that's not from like the door that you're leaving 12 and a half

hours that's like you have to get to the station first and then it's 12 and a half hours and that

puts you at a station and then you have to get from that station to wherever you're going

yeah it's not like oh it takes you from here to here and it takes 12 and a half hours total

the difference between that and chin constant which again would be like two and a half

maybe three hours between LA and Phoenix and it would be powered by sunlight

or nuclear power or whatever being something that's pretty but probably sunlight could do it

um it's it's infuriating it's fucking infuriating I wish more people understood how badly

fucked you're getting in this country not just from like the healthcare situation although

you're getting fucked on the healthcare situation we're spending like over a fifth of our GDP

per capita basically by any any metric that you air any like scale you want to look at it

per person you're spending like 20% plus of the GDP on healthcare versus other countries

that have universal healthcare like and you know it's much cheaper and better quality and

better outcomes and all those kind of stuff and they'll spend 8% or like on the high end like an

expensive one would be 12% or maybe you can find some that go off the 15 or something but they're

rare and they're kind of like um Cadillac plans essentially so so to speak but you know there

are places where it's like 6 to 8% and their their outcomes are better the quality of care is

better and also the doctors are more doctors and fewer payers and nurse practitioners and all

of this kind of stuff there there are so many layers are just fucked up in our system

because like one of the reasons why we have so many of those and so few doctors is because

doctors are kind of scarce artificially like every every year if you look at the number of people

that apply to medical school it's so much more than they actually admit and there are yeah there are

constraints like they have so many residency slots they only have so many slots in the school and

all of this kind of stuff but you could expand both of those easily and go like you know

ratchet them up over the course of time build more medical schools make them free and so on and so on

and in doing that you know get a fuckload more doctors and then we'd have much better care for

everybody and also the doctors could give you you know you could have people who are actually like

not just there for the money but they're to really help and give much better bedside manner

not be there sitting there fighting with the insurance companies spending tons of time you know

just and actually having to pay an extra person to deal with that kind of bullshit and

what it could be much better it could be so much better but because that false scarcity exists

and all of these other things we end up having a whole a need and people who have filled with

people who are less qualified and less trained and it's just it's just a mess and the doctors

are pissed off at the people that are less qualified and trained but also you kind of can't blame them

because they couldn't get in a medical school because you guys have constrained the medical school

stuff and you only have so many residency slots because you're using Medicare and Medicaid to

pay for those but you could you could fund those other ways you know I mean it's certainly like you

look at all the money that we waste on defense and the cops but you could have free medical

education easily fully funded residency programs for everybody that wants to go and you know I mean

you you definitely have like standards and requirements and stuff but you don't have to weed out

a bunch of people who have exemplary like imcat scores and volunteers and they're volunteered

and have great references and all that kind of stuff who would be good doctors just so that you

have like a tiny number of slots and you keep it as like an exclusive profession but anyway

it's it's just annoying I I can't believe I'm an hour 20 minutes and before I finally get to this

so I figured out how to get there and the way to get there is a grayhound which is a boss

and the grayhound that I was on was I think going from St.

Louis originally and so you hop on it

and it's for some reason in Arizona the only options the get from Phoenix to Flagstaff are like

10 something A M or 10 something P M and if you go and either one of those you get there at like

130 is either in the afternoon or in the morning and I A A I already had my my tickets to fly here

for the afternoon B I didn't I didn't want to get like I kind of switched to the morning

but I didn't want to get here at a point where it's like okay you have to go into the grace

the grayhound station to be there at 10 30 or whatever it is so that is after you get off the plane

it's at least probably 45 minutes to an hour you won't of margin so you have to get in at like

9 30 or or earlier and then the flights like an hour and a half and you have to be there earlier so like I'm 30

eight o'clock so I would have had to leave it probably like 7 7 30

I didn't want to deal with that to get there at a reasonable time and then still you're there

you know the whole day and what are you going to do for the rest of the day I don't know

so I went on the later one and I went I I think it was 10 45 that it actually

left but or 10 30 something like that PM 22 let's say 45 and I was able to get there

first on the light rail which is going to is slow I went back to the airport I took the sky train

sky train takes you to the 24th street station and then once you get there you get off the thing

and you have to like walk and it's not well marked so first I left the wrong door

and they closed it at 9 o'clock so I couldn't get back in and go back out the right door so I had to walk

around the thing in a place where there was no sidewalk because of course why would there be a sidewalk

it was just it was just like a fucking pain in the ass and then it wasn't

a way away it was a 15 minute walk I think from there to the to the Greyhound station

but it was it's just like put the fucking thing like build a tunnel connect it with a bridge do something

make it like you're actually thinking about people wanting to do this make it like something that

is not a nightmare fucking pain in the ass to do if you're in Tokyo in contrast

depends on where you are but probably if you're anywhere in central Tokyo five minute walk

maybe 10 minute walk if you're going to be like on the high end you get to a metro station

get on the train 15 minutes later 20 minutes on the high end

you're at Tokyo station right and then you go from Tokyo station you could buy your

shinkansen tickets then a train leaves on especially on busy days and weekends and stuff but

I think most of the time there's a shinkansen between like Tokyo and Kyoto every three to five minutes

like no bullshit like it's completely fucking ridiculous and they're they're decently crowded

by the way so you you get your ticket and you know you you want to get it with enough margins so

that you can get up to the tracks and you know all that stuff but by the time you get there

you don't even again you don't have your ticket you buy the ticket you run up there

get on the train and it's like an impromptu thing like you could just decide to do that on a weekend

and then like two and a half hours later you're in Kyoto and it's it's fucking awesome

and you're sitting on a train that you can walk on you don't have to deal with the bullshit

of like if you're in the window seat you have a stranger there getting you know like that you

have to sit there and debate like do I wait these people up do I get up and pee or do I wait until

and then eventually you have to pee and you just give up and you're forced to have a uncomfortable

social interaction even if you didn't know the person who was sitting next to you there's

enough room even in the like not green cars like this sort of normal plebian car there's enough room

that you could get up and not disturb somebody and you know it's it's just it's wild

how different it is and how much better it is versus here and so and you know like there are some

stations that are a little bit far and you're walking a little bit like in Tokyo station

the distance between the should constant part and the metro part for some of the metro lines

is a little bit of a walk but it's all underground it's all enclosed or you know like there

there are places where you'll have to walk from one station to another but it's pretty quick

pretty short it's not a big deal it's like go down an elevator or an escalator rather and then you

walk five minutes and you go up another one and it's not I'm not saying it's perfect I want to be

clear like it's not perfect but it's so much better it's so much fucking better so I get to the

station and I'm there and it's just like you feel an on-shin constant and when I say shin

constant fill in the Chinese high-speed rail or Tijiefe or any of the other there are a bunch of

different high-speed rails in different countries but whatever it is for the country that you're

talking about the difference is like this is a thing in a real country which just normal people use

and when I say normal people I mean you know like not like poor people I mean like not the poor people

aren't normal people but I mean like a whole cross-section of the country uses it a whole cross-section

of demographics use that and they take it and then you know it's that's just normal and this

instead it's all set up kind of almost deliberately to make you feel like a third-class citizen

and it's like and I'm not I'm not trying to disparage the people that are taking the train or the

the boss rather but basically it's concentrating for people who are poor it's concentrating for people

who are not you know it's not that just focus on socioeconomic status but it's mostly people who are

very low socioeconomic status and they don't have the money to take alternate transit because they

made it suck and it's horrible and it is cheap relatively although not that cheap so you're ending

up with people who you know have more money not taking it and also who wants to go like the frequency

is so low and it's so slow that who wants to deal with that inconvenience versus some alternate mode

versus like imagine if there was a fucking train the train would be so much better a real high-speed

train too I don't mean like the ones that amtrak is like constantly bragging about the go oh we got a

high-speed train and they're so awesome that they can't actually get up to the top speed on their

current tracks and or they can barely ever and they're like this is the train that it looks a little

bit more modern I guess but it's basically what Japan was farting around with in terms of speeds

and quality of ride and all that kind of stuff in the sixties or France or any of these other

countries like in the sixties again literally it's so ridiculous and awful so anyway you're there

feel like a third-class citizen and you get on the thing and and again I'm not trying to

disparage with people that are on it but it was like a fucking hospital like you know I

every time I go to the airport there are people who are visibly like since the pandemic started

there are people who are visibly quite sick and obviously not mass and obviously not taking any

precautions for other people or anything like this it's really irritating I don't like it but on this

bus I don't know how many people are on the bus but it's a very small tiny commuter flight

worth of people if not if even that and at least like three to five people are coughing

and a few people weren't coughing consistently but like every once in a while you know like

disgusting kind of and one person to to her credit at a mask she was very sick though and didn't

sound good and her mask was like a cloth mask not a 95 but she was at least wearing something

and those cloth masks like I I don't want to get into the details of these masks but the person

who's sick wearing a cloth mask is probably better for transmission control for in terms of

like you getting sick being near there then you wearing it in 95 with somebody like that not

now of course both people wearing it in 95 is better it's even if you're wearing a cloth mask

and they're wearing a cloth mask it's better than just them but you know at least it's just

much easier not to get the shit in the pool than it is to get in the pool and filter out the

shit after it's there so to speak so anyway she was at least wearing something but there were

other people that were not and there's not great ventilation on this bus and I'm sitting there

thinking like yeah in 95 is not a perfect protection I get my eyes or mucosa which means that if anything

lands there and it takes hold you can get infected through that path I definitely was not taking off

my mask my mask go a fucking time but yeah I'm sitting there and I'm just like it's going to be

a goddamn miracle if I don't get sick unfortunately I didn't get sick but yeah it was now I will say

that as annoying as it was and all this kind of stuff it's nice not having to drive

I've driven up to flag stuff many times and being there especially at that time and being able

to just sit there in the dark and kind of relax it was kind of nice now of course I got the flag

staff and the station is just like it flag stuff is not that big they'd be fair but the station

was a half hour walk from my hotel I deliberately picked a hotel that was relatively close to where

I was going and relatively close to the station but still I have our walk and yeah it's just like

I don't know it's just the I don't mind walking to be fair although it was like 130 in the

morning when I got there and it was kind of chilly and so walking in the cold at 130 in the morning

and wanting to just get to the hotel and take a shower and get the bed it was a little annoying

especially after being on the bus and yeah it's just like I don't know I fortunately I came back

yesterday with some friends from the union some of the organizers and it was such a better experience

it's just such a better experience but either one is not as good as a fucking train like taking a

goddamn train it's just and when I say train I want to be very clear I don't mean like a shitty

amtrak I don't mean like taking a train that is like an ancient fucking diesel electric hybrid

train I mean like an actual proper high-speed train from the 20th, 21st century not like from

the not a 1900s train you know not something that's like a locomotive so to speak an actual

fucking train and it's just like the fact that this is not a thing here the fact that

people with you know a lot of money and a lot of lead time are slowly kind of building

slight maybe thinking about high-speed rail networks across the US and various places

and putting little legs in and they're still not going to be very good or very adequate or very fast

it's it's it's fucking irritating and then I know people like the the two criticisms that I always

hear and just to preempt these because I I can hear people criticizing before it's like well

Scott the US is very big China's fucking big China is fucking big China's huge

Europe is also big by the way Europe you think of individual European countries and then at that

big but when you look at Europe as a whole it's pretty fucking big and yet each one is a little

country but each state is a zone of fucking state you know it's not that different between the two

you're making a pull-should excuse this is similar to like free mobile

also like 20 euros a month or maybe it's 15 euros a month for better service than I get from

team mobile for like I don't know 7080 bucks a month that's 15 20 euros a month is like order of 20

bucks a month so you can get sell plus high-speed plus yeah and in some of the way we also they

have a home internet for order of the same price and you can get them bundled together and you

save like 5 or 10 euros a month and it's just it's just the difference between being there

in a real country and being in this underdeveloped shiphole is just ridiculous I of the

countries that I visited you know Japan South Korea China Vietnam and Thailand the only one that

feels at all like the US to me is Vietnam and that's because you know not really like I mean

don't get me wrong there are places in the US where you have some kind of public transit that's

not completely fucked yeah you Chicago Boston DC especially New York San Francisco I think New York

is the of the cities that I've been to in the US New York is really the only one that I would give like a

complete fairly decent check to although even there the be fair it's not it's not great great

like they're not maintaining it well but it's still better than any place else that I've been in the United

States but you know you you look at that and like Vietnam was very underdeveloped and

it's getting there like they're building there they're actually by the time the the US has this

a latest San Francisco train if they do finally build it and not cancel it that's going to be

shitty they will have a high-speed train that goes up and down the country you know from my coach

humanity up to uh to Hanoi and it will be so much fucking better it will be like and you think about

there like the cities I think they're developing but they are developing they're not like stagnant

and you think about like well part of the reason the the country is kind of struggling a little bit

is because they're not being supported by the sort of international community in the US especially

and you know like we're deliberately probably fucking things up for them and they're still

yeah like you could live very comfortably there there's there's a lot of poverty that be fair

but also you look at it and it's like things things seem like actually not that bad but it seems

very much like here and I've had people kind of push back on that and say you know like well some

things are better there and then here which I think is true like the healthcare system is probably

in some yeah yeah I'm not saying one is great and one is terrible but things are

things are not clearly like better or worse and one of the other as a general rule and I think that

is a condemnation of this country that it's not like massively objectively better and it's

certainly like compared to the other ones does not come close at all does not compare it I guess

this next one would be like Thailand was there was a lot of poverty there and they obviously

really are hypercapitalistic but at least like in Bangkok there are you know it's not a great

realm that work but it's it there's a couple decent realm that works and you can get around fairly

well you know especially if you're not like completely going arbitrarily anywhere

it's just like and then when you go to as soon as you get to like soul or Beijing or Tokyo or Kyoto

or can do shins and any any like real city and a real country the difference between that

in the United States is just fucking it's wild it's properly fucking wild and the fact that like

you know if you're in Hong Kong you can well Hong Kong is maybe a bad example because it's

kind of China it's kind of not but say you say your inshins then you can take a high speed train

to a lot of other cities from there and it's it's a much better experience than when you get

to that city there's going to be a metro system when you're in that city there's a metro system

and it's going to be walkable now it won't be perfect and I'm not again I'm not saying like

any places perfect but it's just like night and day when you're in this country and you compare it

to these other countries it's just ridiculous it's just over the top ridiculous and wild

so anyway I'm I feel like I'm rambling at this point but it's it's annoying it's greatly annoying

I don't think I'm going to take that bus again but it shouldn't be like that it should be like a

thing that anyone would want to do it should be at least as convenient as driving and really better

because a you know wherever you are in the city five ten minute walk you should be able to get to

not just the light real but something fast that takes you directly to a transit center

that is a station that you're not going to have to go out and be exposed to the weather but

you'll just be like a short walk to the train station and the train station takes you to where you're

going and then somewhere we there there's you know a nice metro around and that takes you

basically wherever you're going to go and it should just be like that it's not like I feel like

I feel like I'm talking to somebody about like they're just the most basic shit like

you should in your house be able to if you have to pee in the middle of the night or or poop

you should be able to go to a room and in that room there should be something there that you can

do that in you don't have to go outside and you don't have to freeze or boil but you should just

be able to be there and then remove the waste you don't have to deal with it and then you should

you can you should be able to wash your hands with soap and you know like it it's like that level

of basic shit and I feel like at the same time that I'm explaining this if I was telling this to most

Americans most museums I should say most of the museums if I was talking to most people I think

people would just be like you're you're talking about fantasy wild impossible shit

stuff that's not possible and so anyway the other thing that people say the other thing people

say is like well it's not just that it's big it's that China has dictatorial powers and they can

do whatever this country uses fucking imminent domain for sports stadiums that they've

still people's houses they build sports stadiums with public money for billionaires like

you can build a fucking train you you can build trains in this country you just have to have the

world to do it you can build public transit and the thing also that irritates me I'm like I'm

in tempi again I mentioned this before they had a train that used to come through tempi

and they're building something which it's lovely I like it they're building like a walking path

and stuff where some of these tracks that were in disused are and it's kind of nice but I'm

sitting there also thinking like well if you wanted to build a train through tempi now your options

are increasingly limited because you're doing this now and like where would you build it like where

you had it before was a nice it might it might have been great tracks it might have but it was a place

right it was a place it was clear and that you could put a train you could put a modern train in

and now you don't have that anymore and you know now you get developments blocking where the tracks

would have been and now you're gonna have to use that I'm in a domain because you're patching

this stuff up like this and it's it's almost a thing where like you look at that and you're like

is this I'm not saying that it's like inspiration but you know you kind of wonder like our

car companies and oil companies and all these things deliberately trying to fuck things up

so that strategically yeah if somebody wants to build stuff that doesn't suck it's very hard

and very expensive and requires a lot of unpopular decisions I don't know I don't know but

it's just it's fucking irritating so anyway well it should I'm an hour 45 minutes or 41 minutes

into this I okay so that is hour 40 minutes of various just random shit I will say like this is

just a cap that off buses like there's nothing intrinsically wrong with buses buses are very nice

especially in places where they're kind of spread out and you need like last mile stuff to get

from the train station to you know someplace where you're further away from a train station

especially like in the suburbs especially like in your developing city or country

you you don't have the train build out so you need the bus and hill as a stop gap until you build

the train buses as just like a long term long distance option sock they're not they're not

great one they're not the the best they're not the way to do it it's just it's just ridiculous

anyway the thing I wanted to end with and this was originally my plan I just thought that I

would finish all that other stuff in like 45 minutes not an hour 40 minutes but the thing I wanted

to end with is sort of a little bit of a thought and like almost a meditation or thinking out loud

about where I'd like to be and you know sort of what I would like to be home you know and

sort of how I'd like things to be and I think this is a thing that's it's an exercise that's worth

doing from time to time I don't think I think a lot of people would put a lot of pressure on

the skin of stuff because it's like you're thinking of what you want to do and make it like forever

and I'm not talking about forever you know anything is open to reconsideration anything is open to

you know changing your mind or you learn new stuff or things change and you go someplace else we do

something else but just at this moment in time sitting your in tempi having just done my

couple months traveling around some parts of Asia and thinking about like where do I want to be what

do I want to be doing and I know like a few things just absolutely I do not want to be in a job

that I have to physically go into an office for I yeah I'm not saying I won't do that but if I

can avoid it if it's something that I can not do that is absolutely very strongly my preference

I just I'm kind of done with it I'm kind of irritated with that situation and I don't want to

do it again I don't think like I've done it I've had the 95 thing to and I've done sort of much more

unstructured stuff and the unstructured stuff is just better and I think also like I think that's

something that should be open to everyone you know just like strictly speaking I know a lot of people

physically can't get a job but isn't like that and it shouldn't be that fucking way you should be

able to you should have a lot of flexibility you should have the ability to actually take

there's another thing that people in the US museums like if you tell them what it's like in

other countries where people take months off every year they think you're full of shit they'll

think like oh that's like a rich person thing no just people in France can take a month off

and when I say take a month off I don't mean that's like their entire vacation I mean they'll

have like six to eight weeks of vacation and they can take four of them off at once

and go on a long trip or just kind of chill out or relax or whatever it also also they have

a decent social safety net and I mean again not perfect it's not like you know like they're

not flaws to this but they do have a decent social safety net and within reason you know if you

lose your job or something you can get assistance you can actually like live fairly well and not

get kicked out on the street but again not perfect not you know like but it's it's it could be

much better it could be so much better in other places but anyway that's that's the thing I want

I want the ability to have a lot of flexibility that is you know I'd really given my

brothers light to not have somebody it I've had bosses that were okay I will say that I've had

I remember like brand-class and John Duce and I two of my bosses at Intel both of these guys

were really great they they sort of they they gave me enough flexibility and freedom to figure out

what I wanted to do and they gave me enough constraints to sort of like knowing what I could do

where I was you know constraints and training wheels to get somewhere and you know like um

everything I learned about Unix and being like right now I'm very proficient and it

came from John Duce and a lot of the web stuff came from brand-class and unfortunately you know

things have changed like John has retired long since and Brian moved to Texas I wouldn't want

to go there I don't know if he's still with Intel I haven't talked to him in a while but

his wife randomly uh was a doctor in her residency when there was in Texas someplace

I should look at that but anyway maybe I shouldn't be mentioning random random people's names

and I think I don't think there's any problem with that though but these were people who were

very helpful at various points in my life and you know then I've had really shitty bosses like

the guy after Brian was terrible one of the one of the worst bosses that I've ever had the one thing

that I can say for him is that like he had no idea what I could do or what I was doing or how to

find ways to make me productive and make me fit in well and all of this kind of stuff and so

he just let me kind of like linger for a while and then eventually just didn't renew my contract

and which was fine because I was kind of like I mean it would have been nice to have the money but

it was also like uh floundering is not fun floundering you know it's nice to the feel like you're

accomplishing something you're going to work and doing something for a purpose and when you're

just kind of like going there and warming a seat it kind of sucks it really kind of sucks even if

I'm very self motivated and directed but you know it's still like you feel very limited and that

it's shitty I don't recommend it so yeah with with job kind of stuff and I'd like to

the nice thing is like if I'm living someplace and I think this is a hard constraint too

like obviously you know I want to live someplace where I can visit my mom and sister often

if I could live someplace that was nicer with them that would be my preference but I don't think

I don't know how that's going to work because they're very deeply committed to LA and I just

think about like LA I mean LA does have a metro system it's not a great one but it's it's okay if

you were like Phoenix if you were on one of the lines and you're one of the major stations

and you know you didn't want to go anywhere that's too far off of the station or off of the

the tracks off of the rails off of the lines you could you could get by with it you could kind of

vaguely feel like if you're riding on that train or you're in the station for a moment you kind of

almost feel like you're in a European country or in an Asian country or like any country that's

actually developed but then of course you then you get it off and you kind of

reality asserts itself but you know it's just not my first choice I'm not ruling it out but

it's not it's not a place I really want to be and it's it's frustrating so you know I mean

of the places that I just was I don't think I'd want to live in Vietnam although living there

would be extremely cheap extremely cheap but I don't think I want to do it I could live in

Bangkok I could like I know a couple people there and the cost of living is actually ridiculously low

and if I had some kind of source of income that was external from the country and I live there

I get them pretty comfortably pretty easily but it's not my first choice I also feel like tie

so I'd eat crap Capcom crap I'm probably fucking up the tones but you know you could you could learn it

you could learn it you could I if I started working while I was there on reading it and I definitely

did not get the whole alphabet or I guess it would be more of like an average and I don't even know

if it counts as an abjad but basically they have the consonants and they have vowels are kind of

separate and they float around the consonants which is sort of like Arabic or Hebrew or

an abjad so maybe it is I've taken linguistics a couple of times undergrading grad level and I don't

remember but you know it's it's a phonetic thing that the tones are not like terrible terrible

Vietnamese Vietnamese I feel like I'm botching that that one the tones were really fucking hard

I like and my memory is not what it once was which is not helping but I struggled so hard there

just to say thank you and hello and the basic basic shit and in Thailand a people speak English

very well and be I think Thai is tractable or more so but you know and then China was nice

I could see living there I could I mean don't get me wrong I could live in a lot of places

but I could live there it wouldn't be that hard the the great firewall would be a fucking annoying

pain in the ass it was it was irritating as a guest as a visitor but actually live there just like

and then you think about it you're like I don't know the the one thing I really am not a huge fan of

there and you know then Vietnam as well is just like the pushiness and like it to contrast it like

in Japan people cute and like queuing is a very big thing and it's really nice it's really

fucking nice and orderly and it works well with my personality you don't have to you don't have to be

like super assertive or really push or anything like that you could just kind of comfortably

follow the rules and the rules are you know some of them are not explicit but they're easy to understand

for the most part and if you do that then things just kind of work fairly smoothly within reason

obviously there is a lot of bureaucracy and that could have said I could totally live in Japan

but in China you know like people are not queuing and they're like it kind of was ridiculous

it's ended on the city obviously like the character would be different but that very generally like

people would just be standing in front of the elevator or standing in front of the door when the

subway opened and the doors would open and they just walk right in while people are walking out

it was the most ridiculous like I wouldn't record it because you know obviously you got a lot of

pictures of people there that you couldn't get permission from and they probably wouldn't

super excited about it but just the experience of it was so fucking ridiculous and wild

it's just like any any more non-avelists a lot of fires because I used wild and ridiculous a lot

but it was it was so just absurd like if you guys would just stand off to the side and let people

off the fucking train or off the elevator we could all get in and out way faster and way easier

but instead what you're doing here is just kind of weird annoying and to be fair I've talked

to some people about this and it sounds like a lot of this might be kind of a holdover of like

older generations had more scarcity and so it's like when you have scarcity you feel like you're

going to get left out of things so your impulse is sort of like the chickens like clamoring over

each other to get food versus you know if things have not been scarce for a while you've been

kind of okay you could be very orderly because you're assured that you know being civil and

following these rules is not going to fuck you out of whatever you need it's a thing that I don't

like about the US because you do need not do the same extent but you definitely need to push your way

in a little bit and I'm not a fan of that it's not it's not natural to me it doesn't feel like I can

do it but it's not a thing that I want to do it's just not you know that so anyway of all the places

that I was and and also like I could live in South Korea but I don't think I'd want to as much

either I'm really I'm all the places that I've been on this trip Japan and particularly Tokyo

although I could take a live in Kyoto I could feel like to a lesser extent but I could live in Osaka

I could and probably some other cities I wouldn't want to live in the Gano

Nagano I don't know how you'd say it exactly but yeah I wouldn't want to live there

although visiting is nice but you know there are there are places I wouldn't want to live in one of the

sea the little villages that they don't have any public transit and it's just like one bus line that

goes down it that I don't have a pass on I want to be someplace where you know there's not just

a shinkansen station but a nice metro and you can get around easily and all that kind of stuff but

I could live there I could live in France I could live in Spain but I think the thing you know I want to be

someplace I don't need like a massive massive space but someplace fairly comfortable

it could be like the size this room that I'm in now is probably I don't even know it feels like it's

like at least 32 maybe even 40 square meters the hotels that I was in in Japan were like 20

something square meters and maybe maybe they got up to 30 I don't know and some of them but

it's it's interesting to me how much more efficient they were with space because like here is a big hotel

the bathroom is huge but it feels not that big whereas their everything was objectively very small

but the use of space felt like they were at least trying they just that side but I don't know what

the size would be but you know having a place and having like a home base where you actually can just like

keep your shit would be really nice having a like this is just where I go and I can chill out here

having my whiteboard would be a big thing being able to cook would be a big thing

having a walkable city that I can just explore and yeah at a certain point you do explore

enough that you've kind of like I've gone to New York enough times or I've gone to Paris enough times

that I think I've gotten to Tokyo enough times I'll eat Kyoto as well but I don't really I'm not

saying I don't need to explore it because like all of these places you could spend years and years

going to try different restaurants and going to different neighborhoods and getting to know places

but at the same time you know on a large scale on a sort of like macro scale I've kind of

yeah I've gone through all the around these small I've looked around I kind of know what's

where it might take me a little while they're kind of reorient myself but I basically

basically pretty comfortable with the cities you know it's a different thing living someplace

than visiting it but being someplace where if I wanted to go for a walk or take the metro I could

if I want to get to the airport it's not that big of a deal if I want to you know do just like

any kind of day-to-day stuff I want to have a grocery store like five ten minutes walk away

that's a big hard requirement for me I'd like to have I mean ideally would be like a

but these are really but you know like some kind of a bakery nearby would be really nice

having a coffee shop nearby although if I was living someplace

kind of feel like I should just get into if that making my own coffee well at least yeah

I go back and forth on the cake up idea but those pods are annoyingly kind of nice and convenient

when I say that I mean you know generally not necessarily specifically that but

there's something nice about that it's not it's not great coffee but you know or

or you know they have these machines that just make the coffee for you and kind of

do the full capuccino for you it's not a great cat it's not the best capuccino you've ever

had but if you press the capuccino button and something comes out that's pretty capuccino is

it's yeah you hit the espresso button and it's like it's not it's not the best espresso you've

ever had but if you are just like having your coffee in the morning it's good enough

or or even like I had when I lived in Paris I had a French press I still have that French press

but it's at my sister's place right now actually but I had a friend a little French press

and I had you know I just got like vacuum packed ground coffee I didn't even use a grinder there

of a cartoon war I don't remember which which flavor it was or which kind but it was not like

the best coffee in the world but it was pretty good and then I got one of the things yeah you just

get like a box of milk that is ultra high temperature pasteurized so you don't have to refrigerate it

and you do that and then you have your little pastry you get your punch chocolate in the morning

and it's just lovely it's just like I can be very comfortable and content in that kind of

a situation just you know like I definitely like I've had some people suggest like work where you're

traveling I don't know I just like anything that you do that you really like that you do

like you convert your hobby to something that you're monetizing or like if I started getting paid

to record these things I'm sure it would become work at a certain point and it would become painful

although I I don't know I I really go back and forth I'm like what can I do because I

there's a temptation to try to do consulting work although I haven't had a lot of offers on consulting

work recently definitely I haven't had a lot of job offers recently like that there was a time when

I was getting the upper release study stream of them and I had people could get me stuff and

I don't know the last few years it's been hard I don't know if it's because of just the overall

economy or like I'm getting older or I'm kind of you know like a little bit of a pain in the

S I'm not a pain in the S but I mean you know like I'm a little outspoken so I'm probably not doing

myself any favors with my social media but you know whatever it is whatever it is maybe my letters and

my CV slash resume are not as good as they could be I don't know but you know I've just been like

getting dead air trying to apply to shit like not even not even rejections just like it's

it's just you send it out and it's gone it just disappears into the void and also like I'm

thinking about it and it's like I've applied to a bunch of stuff I don't even know if I want to

do it if I got it like if a friend who works at Apple and I just like look at that and it's like

you know I mean don't give me wrong I would I would take something now especially if I could

make money for a year or two or a few years but I don't really really want to work there I don't really

want to work in that kind of a job I really like really like the given my brothers what I would do

I like I have a few projects that I can work on that I think would eventually generate money

I would so rather just do that I would so rather just guide myself and work on my own shit and

you know it's just it's really frustrating to see the situation where it's like how do you

how do you make that a thing how do you and I don't know I don't know I'm also like I've had a few

businesses and I'm very I'm very motivated I work hard and I'm self guided and all of this kind of

but the business side of that is not is not me selling is not me dealing with customers is so

like I'm I'm good at talking with people I'm good at explaining stuff that people I'm good at

understanding what they're trying to get or achieve and how to do it but actually just like interacting

with people I get I'm talking like it's making me physically tired just thinking about it right now talking

about it yeah it's like oh it's just it's just horrible and I don't know you think about like

consulting work too and the thing about consulting work is you only have so much time and the consulting

work I don't know I mean this is I guess fundamentally comes down to why so many companies like

monthly subscriptions because they're kind of shitty just in general but or at rent is really it's

pretty pretty pretty fucking shitty but also you know it's sort of a very low effort and a thing so

once you get enough of those you've just got your not made you got your baseline covered and

I don't know I just I just go back and forth on this and it's like I would I would very much

I would like to not have to deal with like selling shit and I would like to not have to deal with

a lot of customer service kind of I just I just fucking hate capital services the thing

if I if I had my like I really have like a magic wand and I can do anything I'd have like

I'd probably just be a fucking professor but in a sense of not constantly chasing after grants

you can write a publication or two a year maybe maybe more if you want to but you don't have

like a huge pressure to and you can work on interesting stuff and maybe I teach a class every year

but probably not too many and I just like I don't know I'm I spent so much time in my life like

working really hard trying to build stuff and like every time I tried to do it every time I wanted to

because I have my own stuff that I want to work on and I couldn't I couldn't figure out how to pay for

that so I tried to do first I tried to raise money for it I couldn't do that and then I got

I did get money for something that was like a side project that was tangentially related to that

that I thought would generate something but it ended up being like I didn't realize like how much

it's fucking expensive to build a physical product and especially like you need to get FCC certified

you need to get you all certified you need to make it so that you know you can you can actually

mass produce it and sell it and all this kind of stuff it's painful and expensive and I raised a

couple hundred thousand for selling like that but I still you know I probably would have needed another

maybe even the same amount to get everything to conclusion to the point where I could actually sell

something and realistically like that was very cheap like if you're a company doing it you'd

spend millions of dollars developing that kind of a product and it's just like I don't know it's

frustrating how like what what is it that I can I because I know I have all these I'm pretty technically

skilled I'm pretty able to do a lot of stuff I just don't know what I could do that would pay

decently enough that I wouldn't hate I wouldn't be miserable and and that yeah I could just

you know say I can't see you know I can't see something that would pay enough to be okay

and not be miserable and you know like you started adding a few constraints there and it's just like

what would you do I don't fucking know I don't fucking know I'm I'm an husband another

think about this and kind of rumenate on it and then I will I won't make a longer one on that one

someday but I think that's probably enough for now I'm already in the two hour six minute mark so

that's that's a pretty long one of these I think it's yeah I do understand that this can be useful as

a sleep aid but I probably probably don't need to listen to to me blathering on about this

and like debating with myself over what I want to do and you know like just going back it finishing

up the thought on the if you're consulting you can only you only have so much time right you'll

me you can't like consult on a million things at once so you can't really scale that business

and so you can only make what you make from it it's not like you're making a product where you

can just mass produce the product it's not like you're making a online service where you can just

sell it to more customers or something like that you're just making something and you're

getting paid to do a certain amount of work and then you do it and then it's done and then

what comes next and it's just like that what comes next thing sucks and then are you how do you get

paid enough because with a consulting I and granted I I know I'm not a great negotiator and my

former business partner very clearly was not but yeah it's just like I I never could negotiate

enough for that that it would really cover the expenses involved in doing that and on top of that it was

just like you know you're once a job is done you don't have a lot of ongoing you know like

if you nice to have maintenance they just baked into that kind of stuff or something so that you

just have a reliable baseline that you can you can pull from instead of you know we would get

big contracts and then we'd have no contracts for a while and when you have no contracts for a while

it really fucks you it's really it's lumpy it's like any kind of freelance work it's very lumpy

you get people doing these you know net 90 kind of things so you do the work and then

you build them and then you get paid like three months later maybe and soften if you get paid it's

after a fight it's like you don't there there there are customers to be fair I don't want to say

everybody's terrible but there are people who you'll send them a bill send them the invoice and they

will just pay and it's fucking easy and you don't have the fight and it's never a big deal but so

many people like if you do that kind of work you have to fight you have to sit there and go like

fucking pay me fuck you and you know like if you try to negotiate and you figure out what the

actual expenses are and how much something is going to cost most of the people will just like go

I don't want to do that I'm going to just pay some dude and india to do it and you know it's just

irritating it's just fucking irritating and I don't begrudge the person who's not taking enough money

for it who's living someplace for the cost of living is much lower

and you know all this stuff but it's just like it's very fucking annoying the the talk to

somebody and it's like I'm giving you a very good deal here this is cheap like realistically

you should be paying a lot more for it and I'm giving you this and then they feel put upon and like

you know like they're giving you an obscene amount of money for something like if you're a normal

if you're just normal level of rich the cost of developing products is very high and you know

just like me with the switch you know you probably are going to spend into the by the time you're

actually like selling and doing stuff into the millions of dollars that develop physical

long word products and you can depending on what it is if it's something like really simple

and you don't have to do that many iterations prototyping it and it's only mechanical

doesn't have a lot or the electrical part is very simple maybe you can do it a lot cheaper

but you know things get really fucking expensive pretty quickly and you know especially you know

they feel like even if you're doing like CAD you're doing CAD just the price of solid works

is ridiculous the price of all of them is ridiculous and so just paying for that is a lot

just paying for your time is a lot and paying enough to be able to you know actually do the work

and have a little bit more and cover you know other expenses and all this kind of stuff

it's just it's very annoying it's very annoying it makes me like I I keep thinking about trying to

find some kind of like an online monthly recurring thing that I could do even though find that

really gross but you know like just something just something that doesn't it's it's very annoying

I just don't know you know like there's a part of me that kind of wants to make something and sell

that but then I think about like all the stuff that I want to make would take so much time and

money to develop and then after you've got it you know like the manufacturing optimizations and the

cost optimizations and all that kind of stuff more money in time and then at a certain point

you've got it you're making it you're selling it and now it's a sales problem so you've got to

figure out sales and you have to deal with that shit and it's just it's just like so many layers

of pain in the ass and I don't know I don't fucking know I hate I hate that we have to deal with this

shit I just it's it's such a and I know also like I make I'm a cutely aware that I'm speaking

about this from a very privileged place and that you know like for a lot of people the stuff that

I'm complaining about is like a fantasy dream like having a job that like my last job I wasn't

out on a roof in the sun in the summer in Arizona for example that's a big deal and I'm sitting

you're bitching about it but at the same time yeah that's it should be better for all of us it should

just be better for all of us I don't know I think with that I'm I'm not exactly tired but I'm

just like just talking about this stuff is just depressing me and it's I can feel the weight

of it physically so with that hopefully by now you're asleep you're enjoying and you're not

actually hearing this anymore so I'm just going to speak very very calmly and say as ever thank you for

listening and

再见

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smenor/tangents

By Scott Menor, PhD

September 26, 2025

The Wheels on the Bus

Listen Later

2 hours 14 minutes

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Wheels_on_the_Bus.jpg

Episode Transcript

there I'm Scott and this is Tangents.

Well it is the 26th of I was going to say

February I don't know why.

I'm looking at my the date in my Mac and it says

Friday 26.

I don't know why.

I don't know why I have it set in English.

I usually

have it in French or Japanese or something for some reason.

I think I know

what happened.

I changed it to English and I never changed it back but anyway it

is Friday not February.

The 26th of September 2025 a minute in wasted on

that.

So I am sitting in a hotel in Tempea, Arizona which is kind of where I've

spent a lot maybe even most of my life not in the hotel but in Tempea.

If I was

going to live in Arizona I don't know that I'd want to be in Tempea

specifically but it is one of the nicer parts but at the same time yeah

I've got some mixed feelings and so I'm going to I have a few things I want to

talk about and then I have kind of an ex-temporaneous shall we say exercise

that I want to do.

So I'm going to kind of jump into it.

I came here well I

flew back from Tokyo about a week ago.

I guess a week ago Sunday.

Today is a

Friday.

So five days ago and that was an LA.

I stayed with my mom and sister for

a couple days.

I like three nights and then Futa Phoenix and I came here for a

couple reasons.

I'm seeing some people and hanging out with some people and

also kind of more importantly there was Arizona Board of Regents meeting.

Yesterday morning in Flagstaff and I wanted to go to that and in going to that well

I should probably give some context for that.

Basically I've been working with

the Union United Campus Workers, the Campus Workers United, you know the

Campus Workers I believe.

Arizona for a couple years maybe three years I don't

even have I've lost track it's probably closer to three.

I've always been

kind of Union curious but I've never been a Union member until my last job and

I will say like even I've had a mix of jobs and employers and I never really

felt like the need exactly for a Union but I always felt like organized labor

was a good and important thing that I wanted to be involved in and I found out

I don't remember what prompted me to look for it.

It was probably annoying with my

boss but whatever it was I found out the ASU and all of the state universities

have a Union and this Union was it's kind of nascent it's not they call it

a pre-majority Union so I don't know what the actual numbers are but it doesn't

have the majority of the faculty staff and student workers but as a decent

number and they're pretty engaged politically I have a lot of issues that I

really care about and for a very long time I've been like it just to be clear

I'm not like saying that electoral politics is not something that is worth

engaging in at all although I have very big misgivings about it especially

given the duopoly and the whole I've talked about those things a lot in other

episodes I'm not gonna delve into it but I'm not really that invested in it

I generally I vote every major election and I look at that as kind of like

such a minimal basic thing I don't really consider it any kind of

activism at all and I've been very interested in trying other other

avenues whether they're organization especially for like reproductive rights

you know but the better social issues medicare for all or better is my

preference really and I've been looking at it organization outside of a

electoralism so the union was a big place for that and there are a bunch of

things that are kind of badly fucked up in Arizona and one of these is that

they're currently wasting like a billion dollars plus a year on vouchers for

private schools and these things like they they originally kind of started

out with semi good intentions which were if your public school didn't have

the ability to support especially the students then you could use these to get

the care that they needed I think this was even from its inception a terrible

idea because what you should do and what should be obvious here is if the

school doesn't have the ability to support those needs they should support

those needs they should develop that ability that is that's that's the whole

fucking way public school should work public resources should work that way

public services the way people have twisted these ideas to to be like oh well

the post office has is losing money they're not making they're not a

fucking business they're not they're a public service they're an essential

very important public service they're not meant to be making fucking money it's

not like the goal it shouldn't be the you know the street lamps or the sidewalk

or the open roads are not meant to make money it's it's a basic service we

invest in collectively and it makes things better for all of us and they're not

their public goods but I don't even want to get into the details but

basically these are things that we should just be doing public education high

quality public education is one of those things now I do have misgivings

about some of the ways that it's used for propaganda especially like I've

been talking about this a lot and thinking about it a lot lately but in K through

12 I went to public school and in K through 12 I don't know it was every year

but feels like basically every year at least for a little bit and often

for probably like longer than any other subject about a dozen times order of

we covered the foundational myths of the United States the same Revolutionary

war bullshit which is interesting given the Kirk stuff because people are like

oh political violence has no I don't even want to get back into the Kirk's

stuff but it's kind of funny seeing all these people especially people who I

know are like huge fans of Hamilton which I also I've had a very big flip on

that I used to like it a lot and now I think oh this is just sort of rebranding

and whitewashing interestingly enough in black faces not black face but

actual black faces whitewashing of racism and child slavery and a lot of

horrible shit that the the air quotes founders were engaged in but again

never mind that now people who I know like that stuff and they're familiar with it

they're not like they know about the Revolutionary War and all this talking

about like political violence has no place what the fuck country do you

yeah and I'm not even saying you'd have to get involved or understand like

all the wars often wars that are not called wars that the US has been

engaged in but just the fucking Revolution like how do you not know about that

how do you not know about like how we have the weekend and it is just ridiculous

it's just completely ridiculous and I think like between mass of amounts of

ignorance and active I don't think that people are necessarily doing it on

purpose but they've definitely been disinformed they've definitely been

propagandized and they're repeating that and so it's it's funny although

and they sort of disturbing way to see people just sort of going like oh well

there's no why would you ever you know it's it's a little anyway I don't want

to get into that now eight minutes then but I kind of get to get to get more

to the crux one of the things that my union has been doing and I didn't go

yesterday in the capacity of a union member in fact I'm I can't remember what

it's called exactly but I'm no longer employed by ASU so I'm no longer an

official union member I'm like a community supporter or something I still

pay dues at least or I will until I run out of money but I'm not like a I'm not a

union member exactly I can't vote so but I do participate we've been going to

these Board of Regents meetings for almost as long as I've been a member I

think the union has they're started one or two times before I started but

they've been doing this and in the Board of Regents meetings they have a

public comment period and the public comment period actually jumping back

to the the vouchers and things just to put a cap on that before I get back to

this they have gradually expanded this stuff and are now again over a billion

dollars a year and it's going to public you're not the public schools it's

going to private schools often with totally different standards often religious

schools almost always to people who like the the vouchers do not cover the

full tuition so it is not something where like anyone is able to get in and

also these schools just to sort of juice their numbers they very selectively

pick and choose their students so the public schools have to teach everybody

which means that if you look at the metrics they're not going to be great

often but if you're able to pick like the air quotes best students then when

you do that you go in and now you get you know high test scores or you know

high college admissions or whatever metric you want to look at they look

good so it looks like they're successful but it's kind of a causation correlation

thing it's like well if we pick the top performers they happen to perform better

than most people that's you know it's it's very circular but people don't really

understand statistics don't really understand causation cause and effect or any

of this kind of stuff so anyway getting back to the board of regions I don't

want to someday I have to do an episode just completely on that because it's it's a

giant cluster fuck and it's so incestuous like there are so many people

Republicans in the state legislature and I don't want to I don't want to let the

Democrats off here because the Democrats started this shit and they keep

voting for it and expanding it and it's very bad and you know it's definitely not

one particular party at fault here but in particular there are a couple maybe

a few Republicans in the state legislature who also own these charter

schools or private schools whatever the fuck they're called and they collect

millions of dollars of public state funds from these things and enrich themselves

with it and it's really you know like so many things in government I mean I

always talk about Pelosi I talk about her specifically because A she's

particularly agrieges and B I don't want people to just think oh you're just

shitting on Trump because Trump is very open about his corruption and all

of this kind of stuff but you know A it's bipartisan B it's not new and C you

know people like Pelosi doing this shit have established that nobody's good

nobody's doing the avoid even the appearance of them for priority thing

which everybody should be doing and so because of that because of that we end up

having this situation where people like Trump could come in and say well you know

or either he's saying it or implying it and people are saying this about it but

they can sort of say well you know he's corrupt and all this stuff but he's

just doing what everybody does but doing it openly and he's not lying

about it which is kind of true if you have no concept of scale or degree like

he is kind of doing the same stuff and it's I really do fault the Democrats

for this because if you avoid even the appearance of him for priority you have

a moral high ground to stand for him to criticize people who absolutely do not

and I would say yeah these doing orders of magnitude worse but then we're

doing bad enough stuff that it's easy to understand why a lot of people look

at them and they don't really see much of a difference especially if they're

not paying that much of a very much attention and especially because like I'm

not gonna defend I keep coming back to Pelosi she's not the only one a whole

bunch of fucking people in Congress who engage in open insider trading I'm

both parties yeah it's it's it's just disgusting anyway to the to the

board of regents who also do by the way this kind of same kind of stuff at

least one of the regents owns property was just talking with somebody about

this yesterday owns property around the U of A and Tucson and is renting

a student that exorbitant raids and is also deciding like things about on campus

housing and what people can do and how the the number of conflicts of

interests like just open brazen conflicts of interests people have everywhere

and every organization in politics today and business is just fucking wild and

it's you know it's no wonder people don't trust anything because it's just

untrustworthy you'd be kind of silly and foolish to trust these people but the

board of regents they're picked by the governor and then there's an approval

process and all of this but basically their political appointees by the

governor they have a certain fixed-links term I think they can be re-appointed or

I'm not exactly sure all the details but basically they come in and some of them

have been there for a long time some of them last and some of them are like old

Democrat appointees some of them are new Democrat appointees some of them are

Republican appointees the newest one they were talking about yesterday and

bragging about was Jimmy McCain John McCain's son who incidentally I just

to vent a little bit here I don't know his current registration but I assume

Democrat at least was registered Democrat for a while but prior to that he was

an independent or an Arizona snow party preference and then prior to that he

was a Republican and this is one of these things I get very in-sense about

because the Democratic Party you have you have all these people who ruined

their party destroyed their Republican party to the point you know like they

their rock stars they went to a fucking hotel destroyed their room and they

did it to the point where they had to leave it themselves like they could not

any longer stomach being associated with that party they fucked it up that

badly and then they come into the Democrats and not only with open arms are

welcomed in and they're not on like probation they're not sold you know

like you can sit here with us but you know your your voice is going to be

diminished they're getting to dictate things like policy positions they're

getting pandered to like these are people who are politically homeless and then

you have this party who they've joined into that has made itself I mean I don't

even think you can call it a big tent because the tent is now excluding people

like me people like me who have these ridiculous obscene ideas like immigration

should be fairly stand very fairly easy you should like maybe maybe there's

some threshold to it but basically if you want to come into this country and

work here you should be able to just like my grandfather did it should not be a

big deal if you get sick there should be health care for you like a real

country the cities should be walkable the cities should have you know they should

be accessible as well like if you are a wheelchair user you should be able to

get around to see you should be able to have public transit that is good and

worth the damn which I'm going to get to in a little bit just basic shit

right stuff that other countries enjoy and if you travel around the world just a

little bit you go to actual developed countries and I like I see a lot of

people say like the the US is the only developed country that I don't consider

this country to be a developed country and I don't say that just to be provocative

or as an exaggeration I think if you make a list of fairly basic standards that

I would consider just basic requirements for being a developed country like you

should be able to get any job and if you're in that job and you're working you

should definitely be able to get housing and eat and be okay and when I say

housing I don't mean like you know you have a closet someplace where you have to

have five roommates I mean you should be able to get like at least a private little

studio apartment personally I think housing is a human right this is another

thing I don't think I don't think it should be required that you work to get

that it should be decoupled from it but definitely if you are working it's

indefensible to be working and still have to be homeless that is

fucking disgusting you should be able to get education for free and when I say

education for free I and a high quality as well not just like you know you can

get kind of like make shift shotty garbage I mean basically like K through

12 plus university plus graduate school as far as you want to go whatever

terminal degree you want or continue indefinitely you should be able to do

that and not end up with a fuckload of student loans you should be able to get

sick and get the health care you need if you get in a crash or your kid gets

cancer that should not financially destroy you and you're legacy yeah there

are basic things that I would say are requirements for being a developed

country and I don't think like and I'm not just trying to make a list I just

want to be clear I'm like I'm not trying to just sit on this country if I made a

list completely on the abstract of things that I think really make you

qualify as a developed country I don't think this country you should be able

to turn on the tap and drink the water and not worry about it that's a requirement

for a developed country you know like basic basic shit and this country does

not qualify you should be able to walk around or go to school or go to a

fucking concert and not have to worry about getting shot that is a basic

hard- pardon me requirement for being a developed country and you just go through

the fucking list and I just don't think we qualify I don't think I don't think we

can qualify and I'm going to talk about the public transit specifically in a

bit which is how I got to well how I got up to the flag staff yesterday or two

days ago but I want to go through the Board of Regents meeting a little bit

first so we get the Board of Regents have been going to these meetings and been

talking to them these are these are full of assholes they're all when you

actually look at who these people are they're basically people who just

donated to the governors and then as kind of like a thank you bought their seats

they got their nominations in exchange well I mean you know is there a

quick pro quo I don't know but you have to be kind of silly to think and

hot these are people that make a donation yeah you may again I know correlation

does not equal causation but you make a huge donation and then you get an

appointment and they happen in that sequence is not like you got the

appointment then you make the donation although even then you could coordinate

yeah it doesn't necessarily require like that there could still be causation

but you've flipped the apparent sort of order of things but anyway that is a

that is a thing to me that it's pretty fucking disgusting they should not be

political appointees they shouldn't be people who bought their seats and they're

all assholes they're all fucking horrible people and getting to the Jimmy

Kane guy he is now I think a Democrat but he's basically a you know older like

not unreasonable and I mean you can't see me I'm not on video but I'm making giant

air quotes when I say not unreasonable Republican you know he's a guy who is

sort of like you know like his his like his dad a little bit you know not like

the current crystal fascists white nationalist just openly horrible people and

I do want to say like you know I've talked to a lot of Republicans a lot of the

people when you start because I keep seeing people think like oh well Trump is

so unpopular and they don't like Trump and blah blah blah if you actually talk

to Republicans and I'm not I'm painting with a broad brush anytime I paint with

a broad brush understand I'm not saying like every single Republican this but

by and large if you talk to Republicans who say you know whether they're

never never Trumpers and begin giant air quotes or they're just air quotes

regular Republicans you talk to them and they will tell you they don't like

Trump they'll tell you they you know they of course they had to vote for him

because this is not me but they thought that Biden or Harris was a

comedy which is fucking ridiculous here is incidentally who just called

Trump a communist to keep their dictator like the people throw away around this

fucking word in this country like I I'm not saying communism is great I have

complicated feelings about it but the way people have no fucking concept either

either have no concept or they're deliberately maligning the term now it is

it's just wild it's just fucking wild the idea that a fascist is like it's

fucking ridiculous but anyway you know they couldn't vote for Biden or

Harris because they're a comedy they're they're socialist and the thing is

like these are fucking if you put them on an absolute multi-dimensional

political scale they are sort of Reagan the era of Republicans like they're

there are people who would have fit very well in the Republican party of the

1980s they would have been like just at home there and which is weird

because Biden of course has been a Democrat since the set well I guess

probably it's whole life but he's been a Democratic senator sitting and the

active politician for a very long time before Reagan so anyway getting through

Board of Regions giant assholes I I really do not think that they should be

political appointees they should be if you gave me my drillers I can snap my

fingers and change things they should be appointed by and removable by the sort

shared governance with the universities by which I mean the the students the

faculty the staff debatably the community should all have their own when I say

community I mean community members that are not necessarily affiliated with the

university they could be alumnus or alumni or just people who live in Tucson for

you a bear people who live in Tempe for ASU or people who live around the

state maybe you just have one whole community one for the whole state and then

you have the three I think that's what I would do you have the three for each

university but either way each of these should have their own sort of

Congress they they have some kind of government for these but it should be

probably refined a little bit and actually have some real power and they should

get to pick the region regions they should also have a way to remove the

regions yeah maybe it takes a two thirds supermajority or something but they

should have like an impeachment process so they they could do that and then the

regions answer to them rather than you know whatever their interests are and it's

kind of funny because the the previous chair who stepped down recently I don't

know why she stepped down but she's she's no longer chair she has a defense

contracting company and basically I don't think it's exactly an exaggeration

to say that she traffics weapons like truly maybe she's you know doing logistics

that are not exactly weapons but she's definitely weapons adjacent if you

want to be really generous to her and probably also traffics weapons just straight

up the current guy is a tobacco lobbyist I mean you know like it is just like

if you if you wanted to find like a fucking evil bastard he was a tobacco lobbyist

he got drummed out of McCain I wasn't present enough in this meeting to

put this into my little speech but he got drummed out of McCain Jimmy McCain's

dad's presidential campaign for representing a huta and Myanmar there's a

dude there who is like a drum pusher I do just they're horrible people they're

generally fucking horrible people the best people on that board are she and then

there are student members but they have this thing where they can't vote for

like a year or two and it's it's a very convoluted in fucked up it's not it's

not at all a democratic thing and they get to make decisions on the future

course of university education in this state and one of the decisions that

they're making and generally you know I mean they get to pick the university

presidents for example who they do this you know they they have a bunch of

assholes like crow who are just terrible fucking people and again they're not

like crow should not be running shit definitely shouldn't be running the

university definitely shouldn't it like there should be fucking term limits I

think too like he's been the president of ASU I think since before I started

graduate school I don't even remember when is when he started but it's it's now

2025 and I'm you know I'm not old but I'm not that young and he's been

president for a long time and I think it's like yeah you're done just fucking

go let's replace you and let's not replace you by doing like a nationwide

search and finding some other horrible asshole to the sit and you see let's

let's do it like if if given my brothers it would be somebody who comes from

not necessarily a faculty member for the university although I think that would

be the right choice but it should be someone that the again students

faculty and staff of the university get to pick and and the regions should

vet and all of that kind of stuff and again the regions picked by and

removable by the students faculty and staff in their sonnets and their

house or whatever the whatever the representative structure is but anyway I

went there and this is this is the the little two-minute public comment I

gave I should say I was kind of shocked that they let me talk because the last

public comment first off I said fuck a couple times maybe like I am so

tired of you fucking assholes or something like that so I would have understood

if they didn't let me go and I also I had a speech prepared last time but I

got I get so fucking incensed like I got up there my eyes rolled back and I was

just talking and I actually get a video of that if it's available someplace but

it was it was fucking annoying I'm so sick of these people and so I was kind

of expecting them to not let me talk again and they do have an official rule

that like if you talked in the last six months then you know we're gonna we

might not let you talk again is like the so this was less than six months ago

and they also have yeah anyway they had another person who came after me

who basically like filibuster the thing and I had mixed feelings on that but

it was it was nice it was fun I enjoyed it but I know it's also like

antagonizing these people who are again assholes and today yesterday

yesterday morning they had this video which I should put a clip of it in

here although you don't need to see it but it was like the before you're flying

on a plane kind of video they made and they're explaining what their policies are

what their procedure is and how they're picking the speakers and it really like

as I'm watching this I'm sitting there going like there's no fucking way

they're gonna let me talk there's just no way but they did they let me talk

to their credit they also there were a bunch of unite here I think they're

unite here local 11 members who are the sort of like hospitality worker

at the universities who incidentally you know like as bad as it is for

faculty and staff they they these have this hospitality workers I guess

actually you should have students faculty staff and hospitality workers or

whatever the although to me that should be in staff whatever they are they

should be represented as well in the board of regions but again you're

everyone who works for the university works with the university has

a vested interest in the university and I don't mean like the businesses although

if you again if you want maybe we have a community thing that they can

kind of get you know but easily overruled but they can kind of get a voice or

they get a region to the whole state yeah people representation they just

don't let them dictate fucking everything it's all I'm saying so anyway

and incidentally that it gets the last thing is they're they're doing a

bunch of shit to basically make the universities in Arizona sort of wings of

like defense contractors they're basically trying to make them R&D wings for

Northrop Grumman and for Raytheon and all these kinds of things pretty fucking

gross to me I don't think it's something that that should be that way so this is

the thing I I spoke about again I hope the hospitality workers get a better

contract because they like these are people they don't have benefits they don't

have you know they're they're living on a nine-month contract and then they

have to get like financial assistance like basically food stamps and kind of

stuff for the the gap they don't have enough money to cover rent they're not

getting paid fucking anything like the well paid ones again in your quotes

are getting paid less than 20 bucks an hour and most of them are getting paid

minimum wage it's it's just a fucked-up situation again with no benefits no

way to to deal with you know massive healthcare issues if they and I always

think about this like if if one of them had a detached rent now they'd be so

fucked they'd be so fucked because you know getting a vet for every

trectomy was not cheap getting the recovery for that was not easy or cheap

or quick and it just sucked it was very annoying I don't recommend it so

anyway rolling up I got there listen to everybody else talk and yeah I

they called me again kind of fucking amazed my performance now will probably

not be the same as it was then but it's not up yet I thought about actually

taking the audio clip from their stream but as of at least when I checked

last which is a little bit ago they wasn't there so they're probably editing

it and just you know doing whatever the which is kind of weird also because it

should be public record and it should just be up I don't think it was even

streaming yesterday but never mind that now this is what I said hi I did my

undergrad in PhD at ASU and Emma former employee I don't think that tobacco

lobbyists who sold cancer to kids and got kicked out of a presidential campaign

for representing a whom to in Myanmar or people whose company's traffic

weapons or drug pushers dressing up in suits pretending that they're

respectable and decent should be undemocraticly determining their direction of

higher education in this state simply because they donated to politicians and

bought their seats here on this board how many people have you indirectly murdered

it's staggering article 11 section six of the Arizona State Constitution says

the university and all other state educational institutions shall be open

to students of both sexes and instruction for anish chubby as nearly free

as possible that is your job here not to further enrich yourselves or your

oligarch benefactors or to turn our universities into R&D wings of the

military industrial complex my hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan

debt says you're doing a terrible job meanwhile you have ice terrorizing

students and your hosting visuals for disingenuous pseudo intellectual

photobader crystal fascist white nationalists who put your students at risk

got your professors assaulted and said innocent people getting shot and

killed this is his words not mine by the way was a fair price to pay and

worth it for our giant air quotes God given right to what I would characterize

as man-made point-and-click murder remotes great job you should all be ashamed

you should all be removed and replaced thank you so that was my that was my

speech from yesterday I don't know that it did anything I definitely do know

the one of the unite here guys afterwards said that it was a good speech you

appreciated it so I felt good for that I do feel like it's something that is kind

of worth yeah it's kind of worth going I don't feel bad about it it's one of

those things actually like there are things that I do where I feel like oh

that was kind of a waste or it was kind of not worth it this one I felt like

yeah as much of a pain in the ass as it was to get there and it was a pain in

the ass to get there and you know flying all the way back from Japan and

all those kind of stuff I didn't incidentally exactly plan my return to

coincide with that I just kind of knew how much money I had and where I was

gonna run out and I also wanted to be here because my mom's birthday my sister's

birthday and some other things are happening in October so you know I kind of

well I knew vaguely when I wanted to be back I picked the time I picked the day

based on almost nothing it was kind of random but some I coincidentally and

some I intentionally bad ended up being a couple days before or a few days

before the Board of Regents meeting and since that was the case I flew out to

Arizona then I planned that oh well back I flew out there Arizona and then I

you can't fly directly incidentally from LA to Flagstaff or I guess you can I could

fly myself because I'm a pilot required to mention that every part or at least every

episode I have to say I'm a pilot but I could fly myself if I spent like thousands

of dollars renting a fucking plane and never mind I'm current technically but I

am current instrument rated pilot technically but I'm also like I don't think

current enough I'm proficient enough that I would feel comfortable without without

some practice and without doing some stuff so I could do that or if you're

taking commercial flights there's just nothing the or maybe there was one and it

was like 400 bucks and it was a giant pain in the ass when I took was like a

Southwest flight who incidentally I should probably I'd like to phase out I'd

like to find somebody else but my mom and sister live really close to Burbank

Airport and LAX is a giant pain in the ass Burbank to Phoenix is pretty easy so

I did that and then you get the Phoenix and it's like how do you get from Phoenix

to Flagstaff and Phoenix to Flagstaff is like a two-hour drive maybe a little

bit more without traffic and it gets up a little bit closer to three hours with

traffic LA to Phoenix depending on how you're getting there and all that kind

of stuff it's like a six if you're driving a Tesla like a seven-hour drive

with the charging and yeah I just I was just again in Japan and I went from

Tokyo to Kyoto which is a rough order of magnitude comparable to the distance

between LA and Phoenix kind of coincidently but kind of not and you take

Shinkansen there and it costs less than a Southwest ticket there's no

security that you have to go through really it's pretty easy pretty comfortable

and you get on there and it's very quick and also this is very important

because they're building some high speed trail or high speed terrain high

speed trains in like LA to San Francisco and then LA to Vegas but you look at

the plans for those like the plans for these are basically like some place

that would take like an hour plus from where my mom and sister live in

North Hollywood just to get to the station to get the train to go to Vegas and I

think the San Francisco one is comparable like you should have a central

and peripheral stations around the city that are very quick and easy to get to

from anywhere in the city and then you get there and then you can take the high

speed train and also and like I don't know that their high speed trains are

actually like Shinkansen T-T-J-V-A Chinese high speed rail whatever those

trains are called I don't think they're the speed that compares to those but you

know again again they're kind of a thing that is improving I guess slightly

slowly over time in this country the the the contrast between that and like I

went to I went to China and I went from Beijing to Chengju

Chengju I don't know I'm probably I'm sure I'm watching that pronunciation

sorry Chengju I'm putting I'm putting in a different syllable letter that's

not actually it's like Chengju but also with it never mind I imagine I didn't

say that or imagine I said it correctly that's a fairly long train ride it was

like a six and a half hour train ride so you know longer than you probably would

want but still going 350 kilometers per hour on a lot of it and it was

an easy to get to the station it was pretty fucking cheap it was it was just

like such a delight versus being here and dealing with all the bullshit you

know you have to go through security is not that bad to be fair but you still

have to deal with it you get on the plane you have to get to the airport like at

least 50 minutes early probably and you get there and then I will I will say

this get to Phoenix Sky Harbor and you know you walk a little bit but then there's

the Sky train and the Sky train kind of almost like if you squint and use your

imagination a little bit feels like you're in a real country and then the

Sky train goes to a station for the the light rail which is not like a metro but

it's you know again also if you squint and really use your imagination you

can almost imagine it's like a real city and then you get that and if you're

just coming directly to any place on the light rail line it's not terrible like

it does again it feels vaguely reminiscent of a real city like it feels like

I might my thought there is basically like you get to order of 250 and

assuming Phoenix is still inhabitable assuming like things don't go cataclysmically

bad I kind of think that there will be actual like high maybe well I don't

know about high speed rail but there there will be friends and you know like

actual like a metro system the light rail will not be so ridiculously

confined like yeah the metro doesn't go to Scottsdale it doesn't go to Gilbert

and both of these cities are like highly opposed to it for no fucking reason other

than like well the their reason is basically purely racist and purely

anti homeless like they don't they don't want to let the poor people come into

their cities they don't want people who are not white to come into their cities

so they don't want the fucking trains and it's really fucking annoying and the

thing that's kind of disgusting about it is the way that the train is set up the

way that all of this stuff is managed the way the city is built and all of

these things if you go on the train there are a lot of fucking homeless people

because the city doesn't do anything like you do not support fucking homeless people you

don't have like they do have shelters and things kind of but they're mostly like private

and they're not adequate they don't have cheap to free housing they don't have like good

support they don't have like you should be able I have said this before but you should

legitimately just be able if you live in a city or even if you're visiting a city like

I know the hotel lobby would be fucking furious about this but you should be able to go to a

city any city any not just major city but basically any city and get a free room and

when I say free room I mean like literally a free room maybe if you want it's at a scale based

on income but I personally think it should be free and you go there and it should be clean

it should be well maintained it should be comfortable and you should be able to stay there as long

as you want and in that room you should have ideally it now maybe maybe you have a laundry

machine that's just in the facilities but ideally you have one in the room you certainly want to

have a shower comfortable bed basic supplies and you know I don't know have access to a kitchen

or something would be kind of nice and also I would I would say food is a human rights you should

have that as well and I mean restaurant lobby would probably not be super thrilled about that too

but yeah those are things that you should just have but it independent of that I came here

and the distance between Phoenix and Flagstaff so once you get here is such that at I don't remember

the exact number but action constant speed should take you know you're I mean you're not going

the high the full speed the max speed the whole time so to be fair it's not going to be 45 minutes or

whatever you would calculate if you just like whatever the distance is divided by 350 kilometers per hour

and I think it was about that but you know you'll you'll slow down you'll have some other

things in the end you might have a stop in between but when you add all that stuff and it should be

no more than an hour an hour and a half they get between here and Flagstaff and it should go maybe

not necessarily from city center to city center all it should but at least like from a place where

you're at a met like a transit station that lets you without walking along distance out and being

exposed and all this kind of stuff lets you just go to there's a dude walking around with an umbrella

that I swear he took off of a table some Flicks it's it's raining outside so I'm just watching

I said incidentally actually this is this is a side I have been opposed to umbrellas

basically my whole life I don't know what it was I just to like I hate the idea I don't like the idea

of carrying around something and this last time like when I I meant to mention this in a previous one

but either way I was in Kyoto and my friend who I was traveling with got an umbrella in Tokyo

and she was she brought it with and basically like then I didn't need a lot of persuasion but kind of

just light nudge plus seeing her have that umbrella got me to get one to try it out and it's so

fucking better it's so fucking better than like you know having a hat which is what I used to do

I mean first off if you have a hat I'm a person you know I'm not I'm not saying that I am

completely immune to social pressure by any means I feel it I feel like if I walk around the

Tokyo or Kyoto and I'm wearing a hat or wearing sunglasses I'm definitely

aware that some people are judging me like and I'm not just reading that in like I I'm good enough

at reading people and social cues I can see like you know walking down and you see someone's

looking at you and you just like and that that's super thrilled not that you know like anything that

I do is going to fit in perfectly there but I could feel it versus if I don't wear that I don't

feel it or I don't feel it for that reason but you know having having a hat

was a thing that I used to do and I always got annoyed with like baseball caps because they're

fucking worthless I don't understand you like they kind of I don't get me wrong I get that they look

cool just in the abstract but you know the sun and unless you're standing in one particular place

with the sun and one particular place you're constantly they're talking your head to rotate

the the bill of that thing so it's blocking the sun or you're rotating the hat and it's just like

such high effort to have that thing so I got like the hat with a brim that's like that far out

the goes all the way around because to me that's like it just makes it you know it looks

dark it looks darky I fully admit not like the I don't feel like super cool wearing it but that's

what I used to have and then I went even to step further and like you know I'd feel the sun

beating down on my neck and at a certain point I finally and I thought about this for years before I

did it but I finally got one of these hats that has that little flap that goes down your back so

it's got the full brim around it and that little flap and for years that was what I more and it's

actually pretty good like it does a pretty decent job of blocking the sun it's hands free which is a

big deal and the ones that I got I could fold up and stick in my pocket which is a huge deal for me

because I don't I don't want I don't like carrying around extra shit I definitely don't want to have

like a backpack or something that or a man bag a purse I don't I'm saying that the race of

we as a person is fine it's fine you can where wherever you want I don't want to carry around

stuff as I just don't and so you know putting it in my pocket it was kind of nice but the thing

had some problems so it would always like I would sweat especially being in Arizona and especially

like if I'm going hiking or something I would sweat and then the thing would get sweat stains didn't

help also that like you know with that sweat you get like a chromatography thing going on with

the sun block and it would just like draw it in there and then you'd have in addition to sweat

stains the sun block stains which would look like sweat stains but even worse and so it was kind

of I don't know what the fuck is going on there a bunch of but I don't know if the if you

heard it in the audio a cop car went by but there I can see the train tracks from here and

like four or five cops have just gone down that's weird something is going on anyway

if you hear something in you it's it's 15 to 41 as I'm recording this right now so

or maybe it's just random who knows um where was I oh yeah the hat so that that was a good thing

it was a nice thing that I used for a long time and I'm not saying that I'm done with the hats

but I finally got this fucking umbrella and I don't know why I was so opposed to the truly

and I will say they're not perfect like one big issue with umbrellas and one of the reasons that

I've resisted them is just wind they they require a certain amount of sailing

proficiency in order to carry them around when there's a little bit of wind and

sometimes the wind overpowers you then and sometimes you know I guess if it was a

optically clear but UV and infrared reflective umbrella it'd be better so you could see through it

and use it as a shield but like I was walking into the wind earlier today and I had to have the

umbrella straight in front of me and I kept checking to make sure that one was there but

it's not from just looking dorky you know it's hard to see it's not the

not the easiest thing to use not the cleanest thing to use but but

if there's no wind and you're using that for the sun it blocks the sun pretty well

the one that I have is UV opaque well you know I mean nothing is opaque opaque but you know

decently so it's like SPF 50 or something equivalent so basically the factor opaque it's

like the same that I'm using for sunblock or maybe I don't know exactly what it was but

it's pretty good and it's supposed to do the same for infrared it gets hot because it's black

but but still it's it's pretty nice and the big thing is you're not sweating into it

and the one that I have and this is kind of a key thing it folds up and I can stick it

it's a little bulky but I can fit it in a pocket and fitting it in a pocket again it means

the I can walk around and have that thing in there and I don't need to be carrying it around all

the time now when it's when it's out when it's deployed you do need you do need to have I'm just

looking at the water rushing into the storm's sewer and it's kind of almost hypnotic and there's

just a little river in this street in front of me almost take a picture of this I don't know that

this will be my image for the for the episode but I would kind of love to make it that if I could

although I'm looking at this and it's definitely not does not convey what I'm going for

but we'll see if I can if it works if you happen to see that and the the image for the thing

then you'll know that's what that's what it was but yeah the umbrella is pretty fucking nice

and for rain and again it's not perfect for rain you know it's very mask like in a sense that you know

it's decreasing the amount of rain that hits you but you're still getting wet especially if there's

some wind and it's often wind with the rain here in Arizona but it does a good job of keeping you

pretty dry and you know especially if it's just like dumping on you and not a lot of wind

the difference between walking around with that and walking around without it is like even with a rain

code on just night and day and the rain code I used to use but I never one day there will be

material that is actually good for raincoat and that material will have this thing that basically

it will breathe really well it will be a very waterproof it won't be like the durable water

resistant stuff that they have or Gore-Tex where you wear it and it's just like either washes off

or it just makes you fucking muggy like it you're just sweating under it it will be

comfortable it will be breathing and it will keep you dry and it will be light and just you know nice

if we didn't little criticism of capitalism that we haven't got that material yet but we will

we will have that material one day assuming society doesn't collapse before then in all of that kind

of stuff but it's an incidentally annoying thing that I find that just you know like Gore-Tex

was invented decades and decades ago and when it was invented it was a fucking cool thing but now

it's just embarrassing that that's almost the best thing that you have and it's it's just like

analgesics we have insides and then we have opiates for pen killers there should by now if you had the

research if you did the research right by now we would have figured out drugs that were anti-inflammatories

and basically had no side effects we would have figured out drugs that could kill pain but not really

anything else so you just feel normal but you wouldn't have the pain like it would just make you feel good

I mean I don't mean you've been actually making you feel good it just make you not feel bad you just feel

okay it wouldn't be like an opiate where it does make you feel good it would be more like oh I just

don't feel excruciating chronic pain and that should just exist that's something totally is doable

and if you spent probably like five to ten years researching it and had some of the doctors who

were now out of work doctors being PhDs we're now out of work doing research and they were funded

and all this by now we'd have we'd have those drugs we'd have a bunch of other drugs that would be

so much better and we don't because the financing system the funding system for academic research

is not great and then the incentives for like drug companies pharmaceutical companies are primarily

to you know find stuff that's off the shelf and package it get you know like patent protection

and just sell it at an exorbitant rate and they do that and that's where we are but there's not

really a really a good system for drug discovery and a lot of it yeah it's an interesting thing

because like if you talk to people that aren't familiar with this they feel like the drug companies

are actually doing that research but in reality and it's not to say that they don't do any research

they do some but in reality most of the new drugs that come out and again they're very limited number

are coming from universities and there are things like that Hep C drug that was bought for

billions of dollars and then they made that up because even though if they would have sold that

you know reasonable price they could have essentially eradicated Hep C they didn't want to do that

but they sold it at a ridiculous price per pill like thousands of dollars per pill and

you know you can get cured of Hep C if you're rich and if you're just a plebian then you can go

fuck yourself you can just have your liver just fuck off and die and and in fact other people in the

process rather than eradicating it which yeah it's just like the way the I know I come back to

capitalism a lot that the way that we organize society and everything we do and all this kind of stuff

is so fucked up and so needlessly bad it's just it's just disgusting so anyway rambling on

I really thought that by this point in the episode I would have gotten to my little

extemporaneous thing I won't get to that soon I think all the way I'm kind of winding down

we'll see if I have the the ganas to keep going but um I don't even know what I was talking about oh yeah

does the abore meeting and the way that I got there was there's notion constant there's no high

speed rail so I thought like okay I'm gonna see what the equivalent is what would you do

if you were somebody living in this country or visiting this country and you didn't want to

don't want to rent a car and I would really I am sure well I'm not sure that I'm going to

end up having a car again but I probably will end up having a car again one day I fucking hope not

I would love to not need one but I definitely for as long as I can I'm going to try to be places

where they're walkable and they have public transit because I'm just tired I'm like having a car

is such a ridiculous expense and the thing you know I mean it's it's like layers of commitment

of expense and it is one of these things also that like locks you into a minimal monthly

burn rate that is it like even if you that I get really fucking annoyed with a lot of apple stuff

and one of one of the things sorry for the drawing change but one of the fucking things that really

irritates me a lot is just the the way that audio is managed just in general um but I I don't know

how this happened I have had the alerts like emergency alerts and all that stuff turned off on my

phone for a long time and I maybe I turned them back on but I think that it turned it back on for

me at some point I know first of all that like actually the amber alerts were turned on

I I don't give a shit about those and I know you know like generally speaking those are like

one of the parents kidnapped their kid I don't need those alerts and it's also like it's not actionable

it's basically I put it in the category of sort of between copaganda and just like straight up

propaganda like once to make people feel like things are really dangerous and scary and so they

send you these alerts that you can't do anything about it's not like you're gonna get the alert

and then walk down the street and see a kid yeah you know it's just it's mostly just so that you

can be like scared so that you can just like ask you to have the ask you police they send you messages

and it's like oh there's somebody scary on campus doing something and that actually usually

actually doing something but just you know like we saw this suspicious character on and then they

hours later say things are okay like all clear but anyway I turn these things off they were back

on and I'm using my AirPods to record this I still need to do something better than that because

you can hear the audio is not great with these but there's something that I have with me

and they're easy and then oh all these things I've got it connected to my computer and for some

fucking reason there's an emergency national weather service store morning thing for some fucking

reason alert came through on my phone bonus vibrating and it overtook the AirPods that were connected

to my Mac and brought them over to the fucking phone so while I was while I was recording and so

I had the alert screaming in my ears which thank you Apple and also it interrupted my flow and

interrupted the little thing just fucking irritating also also also as long as I'm talking about

those one thing that irritates the shit out of me aside from the fact that I can I I have not been

able to turn and I'm a fairly technical person I'm I say that with you know a little bit of

humility but also like I'm pretty fucking technically capable like I can make computers do what I want

pretty easily I can talk to them pretty easily all this kind of stuff I have not been able

since I got or since they got rid of the analog headphone jack and analog dial to control volume

I have not been able to have the volume on my fucking headphones my AirPods or whatever the

you know whatever I've been using I've not been able to have that down to a comfortable level like

especially in a quiet room like in an noisy environment it it it it it turned it up a little bit

just to compensate for the noise incidentally they're also I feel like they're the equalization

on them is like big at the high end big at the low end and down in the middle which is like the

opposite of what I want because I don't want I want like voice to be enhanced I want to hear

very crispy and cleanly what people are saying and I don't want to hear all the background

bullshit as much you know not that stuff down give me the off anyway it's just irritating

because I think when that stuff is down you have to turn the thing up to compensate and then the

overall SPLs are just higher than you need and then you know you're doing hearing damage which

I'm sure I'm absolutely fucking sure these things are doing hearing damage and I have like I turn it

down to the very minimum level and on my Mac like I use the option shift volume down and I can

get it to a quarter of the normal volume down sort of scale and it's still too fucking loud and

a quiet room and then you take it one more notch and it's all the way off you know the fact that

they can't figure this shit out just irritates the fuck out of me and then on the iPhone you do that

too and you can drag it down with your hand instead of using the volume controls which is

really annoying and very touchy and then they turn the fucking volume back up like you're walking

around listening to a song or something and the song is it almost almost a comfortable level

but still too loud and then you start getting it louder and like you can just watch it go up and

it's like motherfucker I turned it down for a fucking reason I don't and the thing that's most annoying

about that is they have like they they do have like an auto level set thing for volume control

I have that disabled I turn that shit off and it still does this and I have a friend who is

prepared and like he needs the brightness all the way up just to just to see and the fucking

brightness auto adjusts itself down all the fucking time like you know let people control their

fucking devices it's it's really just irritating shit anyway anyway never mind to also the like often

um did just the last little complaint about this for now but the alert levels like

you have an alarm or something or a message and I would get like an incoming text sound

and things would be okay I keep my phone on silent now because of this but things would be like

at an okay level relatively speaking I'd have it down at the lowest level again and then all

of a sudden you get one and it's like excruciatingly loud like actually I'm not even exaggerating

I'm absolutely certain that this thing is causing hearing damage and you know it's just it fucking

pisses me off where was I anyway I I guess I get so distracted by this it's just just

irritates the shit out of me irritates the absolute everything fucking shit out of me and Apple

has like that they're doing this fucking Apple intelligence stuff I will believe you guys can do

some kind of Apple intelligence maybe if you ever figure out something as hard as volume control

and brightness control um you know like figure that shit out first make my calendar actually

sync and work like show me alerts that are notifying me about calendar invites and appointments

consistently and reliably because often I you know I've gotten months the get comes and goes

sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't but I've gotten months where no matter what I do

I would not get notifications for for kind of fucking calendar meetings and

you know I'd have to get a text message from somebody saying hey Scott are you coming to the zoom

is like what the what the fuck and then you look at the calendar and it's right there at the

there's an alert set for the moment of and for five minutes before or an hour before whatever

I didn't get any of the fucking alerts and it's just like figure out basic shit and then we can talk

figure out how to make maps work worth the damn like on the maps on both the phone and the

and the Mac if I search for something like I wherever I am I guess if you're staying in one place

it doesn't affect you that much but I've been traveling a bit right if I go into maps right now

and I type in coffee it looks for coffee in north Hollywood I'm in fucking to be like the very first

option like if I hit enter coffee in north Hollywood if I click the top one coffee in north Hollywood

not coffee nearby not coffee in the map region that I'm looking at it's just like the fact that they

can't do shit like this and I'm not I'm not talking about like really like subtle nuanced

tricky stuff I'm talking about just like basic everyday kind of shit that anyone using a Mac

would actually fucking want that would be you know figure that stuff out figure that stuff out

first so getting back to that if you have a car the minimum monthly burn rate that you have

with that car is such that you know like you you can't reduce your cost below a certain number

and maybe you have an older car that is paid for you still have insurance that you have to pay

for you still have basic maintenance that you have to pay for if you want the car to to last

and if it's an older car good luck not having it break down and good luck not having like some

some compressor or an alternator or whatever fails and it has to be replaced in a cost of

thousand bucks or the air conditioner breaks or whatever it is something breaks down on that car

and it takes maintenance and it's it's just a consistent continuous thing you don't have to be

in the situation I was in which I deeply regret and I'm glad to be fucking out of it but

I when I was getting paid a lot better I got a Tesla Model 3 and I very foolishly got a shorter

lease I don't know why I didn't just get the longest and not at least alone I got a shorter

loan because I wanted to pay it off more quickly and which would have been fine if I kept that

income it was not that big of an expense relatively speaking with the income that I had but then

I lost that job and then I didn't get paid for a year plus and then the job that I got

paid like a third of what I was getting prior and then it went from being like not that much money

relatively speaking to literally half of my paycheck like one of my paychecks was going to the car

for the eleven hundred per month for the loan and then like four hundred a month for the insurance

so like fifteen hundred a month was my take home on the paycheck one paycheck was going to that

another paycheck was going to rent and then what do I do for food what do I do for and yeah

like it's a real fucking problem it's a real annoying fucking problem and again you could get a

car that's cheaper than that but you have the new car and you have the fixed expenses for that

or you have an old car and then you have the random stochastic expenses that you never

can predict when they're going to come up and also are you going to be without a car like

Prunos what's going to happen is it going to be something that like even if you have the money for it

are you going to end up having to not have a car or have a rental for a week or two

I'd you know or somebody hits your car guy who knows what the fuck is going to happen

but it's it's really there was a thing on blue sky this morning somebody said like what are

your biggest complaints about or what is your biggest complaint about having a car or about cars

something like they're driving or something like that and I was very pleased to see like a good third of

the people who responded maybe it was a quarter but a huge chunk of the people that responded

all said you know we're upset because some some version of just driving like the fact that you can't

have a city where you could just not have a car and it's one of these things like if you live in

this country people have decided cars and cities that are built around cars are somehow freedom

but they are just a ball and chain that everybody is attached to and you know most people

especially people that are working they either have to have a car or if they can't afford a car

they have to convert like you know like in Phoenix there are buses but the frequency is very low

there's light rail but the frequency is very low and it doesn't go that many places

and if you live someplace and you need to get to and from work and you can't afford a car

the thing that you can do is like take buses and then you know maybe it takes an hour and a half

or two hours to get the work and two hours to get back home so that's an unpaid half of a day of work

potentially that you're spending dealing with transit you know it's fucking annoying and it's not

free either like it's not expensive expensive but if you're using the light rail twice a day

it's four bucks a day in a month that's like 60 bucks all right I can't even do the math

in a month I guess that would be four bucks a day five days a week so 20 bucks a week

times four so it's like 80 bucks in a month give or take and you can get like discounts and

things like this but it's still a decent expense just to do that and again the light rail is not

it's not very high frequency and it's not very fast like it goes from tempede to sort of

Mesa ish to downtown Phoenix to a little bit out and you go down to those distances and it's like

it takes as long as it takes to drive in a car even with you know if there's traffic maybe it's

cutting a little bit of time but it's also it's a light rail going through the roads so it has to

deal with traffic as the wait for stoplights and stuff like this it doesn't go very fast it's like

and it's it's only two cars which is weird it's compared to like being in Tokyo where you have

these trains that are racing through and they got a big fucking cars full of people and then you

have the light rail here and it's like two cars lumbering along they come every like 15 minutes there

it's like two minutes maybe if you're on a low frequency one it'll be like every five minutes

a train comes and it'll be six to eight cars at a there's plenty of space and if that one is full

wait another five minutes and there's another one or during rush hour wait a couple minutes two

three minutes and there's another one the difference is just wild it's just absolutely fucking wild and

you know again you have the shinkansen and this is the thing I wanted to talk about I still haven't

gotten to the extent for any of this thing I'm probably going to talk about that but we'll see

I got energized by my complain about the AirPods and the fucking notification

almost all these notifications too like I do think that the emergency weather alert or

like if something serious is happening I'd kind of like to know but I don't want my phone to be

screaming at me I don't want to just take over the AirPods and scream at night ears and interrupt

my recording I'd like to just have like a little notification and see it but anyway um yeah I

wanted to see what you would do if you're trying to take like a reasonable sort of equivalent of train

and there is a train incidentally that goes from LA to flag stuff but it's like a 12 and a

half hour train ride it's like you know I just I can't I can't can they how ridiculously slow

that is and and of course also that's not from like the door that you're leaving 12 and a half

hours that's like you have to get to the station first and then it's 12 and a half hours and that

puts you at a station and then you have to get from that station to wherever you're going

yeah it's not like oh it takes you from here to here and it takes 12 and a half hours total

the difference between that and chin constant which again would be like two and a half

maybe three hours between LA and Phoenix and it would be powered by sunlight

or nuclear power or whatever being something that's pretty but probably sunlight could do it

um it's it's infuriating it's fucking infuriating I wish more people understood how badly

fucked you're getting in this country not just from like the healthcare situation although

you're getting fucked on the healthcare situation we're spending like over a fifth of our GDP

per capita basically by any any metric that you air any like scale you want to look at it

per person you're spending like 20% plus of the GDP on healthcare versus other countries

that have universal healthcare like and you know it's much cheaper and better quality and

better outcomes and all those kind of stuff and they'll spend 8% or like on the high end like an

expensive one would be 12% or maybe you can find some that go off the 15 or something but they're

rare and they're kind of like um Cadillac plans essentially so so to speak but you know there

are places where it's like 6 to 8% and their their outcomes are better the quality of care is

better and also the doctors are more doctors and fewer payers and nurse practitioners and all

of this kind of stuff there there are so many layers are just fucked up in our system

because like one of the reasons why we have so many of those and so few doctors is because

doctors are kind of scarce artificially like every every year if you look at the number of people

that apply to medical school it's so much more than they actually admit and there are yeah there are

constraints like they have so many residency slots they only have so many slots in the school and

all of this kind of stuff but you could expand both of those easily and go like you know

ratchet them up over the course of time build more medical schools make them free and so on and so on

and in doing that you know get a fuckload more doctors and then we'd have much better care for

everybody and also the doctors could give you you know you could have people who are actually like

not just there for the money but they're to really help and give much better bedside manner

not be there sitting there fighting with the insurance companies spending tons of time you know

just and actually having to pay an extra person to deal with that kind of bullshit and

what it could be much better it could be so much better but because that false scarcity exists

and all of these other things we end up having a whole a need and people who have filled with

people who are less qualified and less trained and it's just it's just a mess and the doctors

are pissed off at the people that are less qualified and trained but also you kind of can't blame them

because they couldn't get in a medical school because you guys have constrained the medical school

stuff and you only have so many residency slots because you're using Medicare and Medicaid to

pay for those but you could you could fund those other ways you know I mean it's certainly like you

look at all the money that we waste on defense and the cops but you could have free medical

education easily fully funded residency programs for everybody that wants to go and you know I mean

you you definitely have like standards and requirements and stuff but you don't have to weed out

a bunch of people who have exemplary like imcat scores and volunteers and they're volunteered

and have great references and all that kind of stuff who would be good doctors just so that you

have like a tiny number of slots and you keep it as like an exclusive profession but anyway

it's it's just annoying I I can't believe I'm an hour 20 minutes and before I finally get to this

so I figured out how to get there and the way to get there is a grayhound which is a boss

and the grayhound that I was on was I think going from St.

Louis originally and so you hop on it

and it's for some reason in Arizona the only options the get from Phoenix to Flagstaff are like

10 something A M or 10 something P M and if you go and either one of those you get there at like

130 is either in the afternoon or in the morning and I A A I already had my my tickets to fly here

for the afternoon B I didn't I didn't want to get like I kind of switched to the morning

but I didn't want to get here at a point where it's like okay you have to go into the grace

the grayhound station to be there at 10 30 or whatever it is so that is after you get off the plane

it's at least probably 45 minutes to an hour you won't of margin so you have to get in at like

9 30 or or earlier and then the flights like an hour and a half and you have to be there earlier so like I'm 30

eight o'clock so I would have had to leave it probably like 7 7 30

I didn't want to deal with that to get there at a reasonable time and then still you're there

you know the whole day and what are you going to do for the rest of the day I don't know

so I went on the later one and I went I I think it was 10 45 that it actually

left but or 10 30 something like that PM 22 let's say 45 and I was able to get there

first on the light rail which is going to is slow I went back to the airport I took the sky train

sky train takes you to the 24th street station and then once you get there you get off the thing

and you have to like walk and it's not well marked so first I left the wrong door

and they closed it at 9 o'clock so I couldn't get back in and go back out the right door so I had to walk

around the thing in a place where there was no sidewalk because of course why would there be a sidewalk

it was just it was just like a fucking pain in the ass and then it wasn't

a way away it was a 15 minute walk I think from there to the to the Greyhound station

but it was it's just like put the fucking thing like build a tunnel connect it with a bridge do something

make it like you're actually thinking about people wanting to do this make it like something that

is not a nightmare fucking pain in the ass to do if you're in Tokyo in contrast

depends on where you are but probably if you're anywhere in central Tokyo five minute walk

maybe 10 minute walk if you're going to be like on the high end you get to a metro station

get on the train 15 minutes later 20 minutes on the high end

you're at Tokyo station right and then you go from Tokyo station you could buy your

shinkansen tickets then a train leaves on especially on busy days and weekends and stuff but

I think most of the time there's a shinkansen between like Tokyo and Kyoto every three to five minutes

like no bullshit like it's completely fucking ridiculous and they're they're decently crowded

by the way so you you get your ticket and you know you you want to get it with enough margins so

that you can get up to the tracks and you know all that stuff but by the time you get there

you don't even again you don't have your ticket you buy the ticket you run up there

get on the train and it's like an impromptu thing like you could just decide to do that on a weekend

and then like two and a half hours later you're in Kyoto and it's it's fucking awesome

and you're sitting on a train that you can walk on you don't have to deal with the bullshit

of like if you're in the window seat you have a stranger there getting you know like that you

have to sit there and debate like do I wait these people up do I get up and pee or do I wait until

and then eventually you have to pee and you just give up and you're forced to have a uncomfortable

social interaction even if you didn't know the person who was sitting next to you there's

enough room even in the like not green cars like this sort of normal plebian car there's enough room

that you could get up and not disturb somebody and you know it's it's just it's wild

how different it is and how much better it is versus here and so and you know like there are some

stations that are a little bit far and you're walking a little bit like in Tokyo station

the distance between the should constant part and the metro part for some of the metro lines

is a little bit of a walk but it's all underground it's all enclosed or you know like there

there are places where you'll have to walk from one station to another but it's pretty quick

pretty short it's not a big deal it's like go down an elevator or an escalator rather and then you

walk five minutes and you go up another one and it's not I'm not saying it's perfect I want to be

clear like it's not perfect but it's so much better it's so much fucking better so I get to the

station and I'm there and it's just like you feel an on-shin constant and when I say shin

constant fill in the Chinese high-speed rail or Tijiefe or any of the other there are a bunch of

different high-speed rails in different countries but whatever it is for the country that you're

talking about the difference is like this is a thing in a real country which just normal people use

and when I say normal people I mean you know like not like poor people I mean like not the poor people

aren't normal people but I mean like a whole cross-section of the country uses it a whole cross-section

of demographics use that and they take it and then you know it's that's just normal and this

instead it's all set up kind of almost deliberately to make you feel like a third-class citizen

and it's like and I'm not I'm not trying to disparage the people that are taking the train or the

the boss rather but basically it's concentrating for people who are poor it's concentrating for people

who are not you know it's not that just focus on socioeconomic status but it's mostly people who are

very low socioeconomic status and they don't have the money to take alternate transit because they

made it suck and it's horrible and it is cheap relatively although not that cheap so you're ending

up with people who you know have more money not taking it and also who wants to go like the frequency

is so low and it's so slow that who wants to deal with that inconvenience versus some alternate mode

versus like imagine if there was a fucking train the train would be so much better a real high-speed

train too I don't mean like the ones that amtrak is like constantly bragging about the go oh we got a

high-speed train and they're so awesome that they can't actually get up to the top speed on their

current tracks and or they can barely ever and they're like this is the train that it looks a little

bit more modern I guess but it's basically what Japan was farting around with in terms of speeds

and quality of ride and all that kind of stuff in the sixties or France or any of these other

countries like in the sixties again literally it's so ridiculous and awful so anyway you're there

feel like a third-class citizen and you get on the thing and and again I'm not trying to

disparage with people that are on it but it was like a fucking hospital like you know I

every time I go to the airport there are people who are visibly like since the pandemic started

there are people who are visibly quite sick and obviously not mass and obviously not taking any

precautions for other people or anything like this it's really irritating I don't like it but on this

bus I don't know how many people are on the bus but it's a very small tiny commuter flight

worth of people if not if even that and at least like three to five people are coughing

and a few people weren't coughing consistently but like every once in a while you know like

disgusting kind of and one person to to her credit at a mask she was very sick though and didn't

sound good and her mask was like a cloth mask not a 95 but she was at least wearing something

and those cloth masks like I I don't want to get into the details of these masks but the person

who's sick wearing a cloth mask is probably better for transmission control for in terms of

like you getting sick being near there then you wearing it in 95 with somebody like that not

now of course both people wearing it in 95 is better it's even if you're wearing a cloth mask

and they're wearing a cloth mask it's better than just them but you know at least it's just

much easier not to get the shit in the pool than it is to get in the pool and filter out the

shit after it's there so to speak so anyway she was at least wearing something but there were

other people that were not and there's not great ventilation on this bus and I'm sitting there

thinking like yeah in 95 is not a perfect protection I get my eyes or mucosa which means that if anything

lands there and it takes hold you can get infected through that path I definitely was not taking off

my mask my mask go a fucking time but yeah I'm sitting there and I'm just like it's going to be

a goddamn miracle if I don't get sick unfortunately I didn't get sick but yeah it was now I will say

that as annoying as it was and all this kind of stuff it's nice not having to drive

I've driven up to flag stuff many times and being there especially at that time and being able

to just sit there in the dark and kind of relax it was kind of nice now of course I got the flag

staff and the station is just like it flag stuff is not that big they'd be fair but the station

was a half hour walk from my hotel I deliberately picked a hotel that was relatively close to where

I was going and relatively close to the station but still I have our walk and yeah it's just like

I don't know it's just the I don't mind walking to be fair although it was like 130 in the

morning when I got there and it was kind of chilly and so walking in the cold at 130 in the morning

and wanting to just get to the hotel and take a shower and get the bed it was a little annoying

especially after being on the bus and yeah it's just like I don't know I fortunately I came back

yesterday with some friends from the union some of the organizers and it was such a better experience

it's just such a better experience but either one is not as good as a fucking train like taking a

goddamn train it's just and when I say train I want to be very clear I don't mean like a shitty

amtrak I don't mean like taking a train that is like an ancient fucking diesel electric hybrid

train I mean like an actual proper high-speed train from the 20th, 21st century not like from

the not a 1900s train you know not something that's like a locomotive so to speak an actual

fucking train and it's just like the fact that this is not a thing here the fact that

people with you know a lot of money and a lot of lead time are slowly kind of building

slight maybe thinking about high-speed rail networks across the US and various places

and putting little legs in and they're still not going to be very good or very adequate or very fast

it's it's it's fucking irritating and then I know people like the the two criticisms that I always

hear and just to preempt these because I I can hear people criticizing before it's like well

Scott the US is very big China's fucking big China is fucking big China's huge

Europe is also big by the way Europe you think of individual European countries and then at that

big but when you look at Europe as a whole it's pretty fucking big and yet each one is a little

country but each state is a zone of fucking state you know it's not that different between the two

you're making a pull-should excuse this is similar to like free mobile

also like 20 euros a month or maybe it's 15 euros a month for better service than I get from

team mobile for like I don't know 7080 bucks a month that's 15 20 euros a month is like order of 20

bucks a month so you can get sell plus high-speed plus yeah and in some of the way we also they

have a home internet for order of the same price and you can get them bundled together and you

save like 5 or 10 euros a month and it's just it's just the difference between being there

in a real country and being in this underdeveloped shiphole is just ridiculous I of the

countries that I visited you know Japan South Korea China Vietnam and Thailand the only one that

feels at all like the US to me is Vietnam and that's because you know not really like I mean

don't get me wrong there are places in the US where you have some kind of public transit that's

not completely fucked yeah you Chicago Boston DC especially New York San Francisco I think New York

is the of the cities that I've been to in the US New York is really the only one that I would give like a

complete fairly decent check to although even there the be fair it's not it's not great great

like they're not maintaining it well but it's still better than any place else that I've been in the United

States but you know you you look at that and like Vietnam was very underdeveloped and

it's getting there like they're building there they're actually by the time the the US has this

a latest San Francisco train if they do finally build it and not cancel it that's going to be

shitty they will have a high-speed train that goes up and down the country you know from my coach

humanity up to uh to Hanoi and it will be so much fucking better it will be like and you think about

there like the cities I think they're developing but they are developing they're not like stagnant

and you think about like well part of the reason the the country is kind of struggling a little bit

is because they're not being supported by the sort of international community in the US especially

and you know like we're deliberately probably fucking things up for them and they're still

yeah like you could live very comfortably there there's there's a lot of poverty that be fair

but also you look at it and it's like things things seem like actually not that bad but it seems

very much like here and I've had people kind of push back on that and say you know like well some

things are better there and then here which I think is true like the healthcare system is probably

in some yeah yeah I'm not saying one is great and one is terrible but things are

things are not clearly like better or worse and one of the other as a general rule and I think that

is a condemnation of this country that it's not like massively objectively better and it's

certainly like compared to the other ones does not come close at all does not compare it I guess

this next one would be like Thailand was there was a lot of poverty there and they obviously

really are hypercapitalistic but at least like in Bangkok there are you know it's not a great

realm that work but it's it there's a couple decent realm that works and you can get around fairly

well you know especially if you're not like completely going arbitrarily anywhere

it's just like and then when you go to as soon as you get to like soul or Beijing or Tokyo or Kyoto

or can do shins and any any like real city and a real country the difference between that

in the United States is just fucking it's wild it's properly fucking wild and the fact that like

you know if you're in Hong Kong you can well Hong Kong is maybe a bad example because it's

kind of China it's kind of not but say you say your inshins then you can take a high speed train

to a lot of other cities from there and it's it's a much better experience than when you get

to that city there's going to be a metro system when you're in that city there's a metro system

and it's going to be walkable now it won't be perfect and I'm not again I'm not saying like

any places perfect but it's just like night and day when you're in this country and you compare it

to these other countries it's just ridiculous it's just over the top ridiculous and wild

so anyway I'm I feel like I'm rambling at this point but it's it's annoying it's greatly annoying

I don't think I'm going to take that bus again but it shouldn't be like that it should be like a

thing that anyone would want to do it should be at least as convenient as driving and really better

because a you know wherever you are in the city five ten minute walk you should be able to get to

not just the light real but something fast that takes you directly to a transit center

that is a station that you're not going to have to go out and be exposed to the weather but

you'll just be like a short walk to the train station and the train station takes you to where you're

going and then somewhere we there there's you know a nice metro around and that takes you

basically wherever you're going to go and it should just be like that it's not like I feel like

I feel like I'm talking to somebody about like they're just the most basic shit like

you should in your house be able to if you have to pee in the middle of the night or or poop

you should be able to go to a room and in that room there should be something there that you can

do that in you don't have to go outside and you don't have to freeze or boil but you should just

be able to be there and then remove the waste you don't have to deal with it and then you should

you can you should be able to wash your hands with soap and you know like it it's like that level

of basic shit and I feel like at the same time that I'm explaining this if I was telling this to most

Americans most museums I should say most of the museums if I was talking to most people I think

people would just be like you're you're talking about fantasy wild impossible shit

stuff that's not possible and so anyway the other thing that people say the other thing people

say is like well it's not just that it's big it's that China has dictatorial powers and they can

do whatever this country uses fucking imminent domain for sports stadiums that they've

still people's houses they build sports stadiums with public money for billionaires like

you can build a fucking train you you can build trains in this country you just have to have the

world to do it you can build public transit and the thing also that irritates me I'm like I'm

in tempi again I mentioned this before they had a train that used to come through tempi

and they're building something which it's lovely I like it they're building like a walking path

and stuff where some of these tracks that were in disused are and it's kind of nice but I'm

sitting there also thinking like well if you wanted to build a train through tempi now your options

are increasingly limited because you're doing this now and like where would you build it like where

you had it before was a nice it might it might have been great tracks it might have but it was a place

right it was a place it was clear and that you could put a train you could put a modern train in

and now you don't have that anymore and you know now you get developments blocking where the tracks

would have been and now you're gonna have to use that I'm in a domain because you're patching

this stuff up like this and it's it's almost a thing where like you look at that and you're like

is this I'm not saying that it's like inspiration but you know you kind of wonder like our

car companies and oil companies and all these things deliberately trying to fuck things up

so that strategically yeah if somebody wants to build stuff that doesn't suck it's very hard

and very expensive and requires a lot of unpopular decisions I don't know I don't know but

it's just it's fucking irritating so anyway well it should I'm an hour 45 minutes or 41 minutes

into this I okay so that is hour 40 minutes of various just random shit I will say like this is

just a cap that off buses like there's nothing intrinsically wrong with buses buses are very nice

especially in places where they're kind of spread out and you need like last mile stuff to get

from the train station to you know someplace where you're further away from a train station

especially like in the suburbs especially like in your developing city or country

you you don't have the train build out so you need the bus and hill as a stop gap until you build

the train buses as just like a long term long distance option sock they're not they're not

great one they're not the the best they're not the way to do it it's just it's just ridiculous

anyway the thing I wanted to end with and this was originally my plan I just thought that I

would finish all that other stuff in like 45 minutes not an hour 40 minutes but the thing I wanted

to end with is sort of a little bit of a thought and like almost a meditation or thinking out loud

about where I'd like to be and you know sort of what I would like to be home you know and

sort of how I'd like things to be and I think this is a thing that's it's an exercise that's worth

doing from time to time I don't think I think a lot of people would put a lot of pressure on

the skin of stuff because it's like you're thinking of what you want to do and make it like forever

and I'm not talking about forever you know anything is open to reconsideration anything is open to

you know changing your mind or you learn new stuff or things change and you go someplace else we do

something else but just at this moment in time sitting your in tempi having just done my

couple months traveling around some parts of Asia and thinking about like where do I want to be what

do I want to be doing and I know like a few things just absolutely I do not want to be in a job

that I have to physically go into an office for I yeah I'm not saying I won't do that but if I

can avoid it if it's something that I can not do that is absolutely very strongly my preference

I just I'm kind of done with it I'm kind of irritated with that situation and I don't want to

do it again I don't think like I've done it I've had the 95 thing to and I've done sort of much more

unstructured stuff and the unstructured stuff is just better and I think also like I think that's

something that should be open to everyone you know just like strictly speaking I know a lot of people

physically can't get a job but isn't like that and it shouldn't be that fucking way you should be

able to you should have a lot of flexibility you should have the ability to actually take

there's another thing that people in the US museums like if you tell them what it's like in

other countries where people take months off every year they think you're full of shit they'll

think like oh that's like a rich person thing no just people in France can take a month off

and when I say take a month off I don't mean that's like their entire vacation I mean they'll

have like six to eight weeks of vacation and they can take four of them off at once

and go on a long trip or just kind of chill out or relax or whatever it also also they have

a decent social safety net and I mean again not perfect it's not like you know like they're

not flaws to this but they do have a decent social safety net and within reason you know if you

lose your job or something you can get assistance you can actually like live fairly well and not

get kicked out on the street but again not perfect not you know like but it's it's it could be

much better it could be so much better in other places but anyway that's that's the thing I want

I want the ability to have a lot of flexibility that is you know I'd really given my

brothers light to not have somebody it I've had bosses that were okay I will say that I've had

I remember like brand-class and John Duce and I two of my bosses at Intel both of these guys

were really great they they sort of they they gave me enough flexibility and freedom to figure out

what I wanted to do and they gave me enough constraints to sort of like knowing what I could do

where I was you know constraints and training wheels to get somewhere and you know like um

everything I learned about Unix and being like right now I'm very proficient and it

came from John Duce and a lot of the web stuff came from brand-class and unfortunately you know

things have changed like John has retired long since and Brian moved to Texas I wouldn't want

to go there I don't know if he's still with Intel I haven't talked to him in a while but

his wife randomly uh was a doctor in her residency when there was in Texas someplace

I should look at that but anyway maybe I shouldn't be mentioning random random people's names

and I think I don't think there's any problem with that though but these were people who were

very helpful at various points in my life and you know then I've had really shitty bosses like

the guy after Brian was terrible one of the one of the worst bosses that I've ever had the one thing

that I can say for him is that like he had no idea what I could do or what I was doing or how to

find ways to make me productive and make me fit in well and all of this kind of stuff and so

he just let me kind of like linger for a while and then eventually just didn't renew my contract

and which was fine because I was kind of like I mean it would have been nice to have the money but

it was also like uh floundering is not fun floundering you know it's nice to the feel like you're

accomplishing something you're going to work and doing something for a purpose and when you're

just kind of like going there and warming a seat it kind of sucks it really kind of sucks even if

I'm very self motivated and directed but you know it's still like you feel very limited and that

it's shitty I don't recommend it so yeah with with job kind of stuff and I'd like to

the nice thing is like if I'm living someplace and I think this is a hard constraint too

like obviously you know I want to live someplace where I can visit my mom and sister often

if I could live someplace that was nicer with them that would be my preference but I don't think

I don't know how that's going to work because they're very deeply committed to LA and I just

think about like LA I mean LA does have a metro system it's not a great one but it's it's okay if

you were like Phoenix if you were on one of the lines and you're one of the major stations

and you know you didn't want to go anywhere that's too far off of the station or off of the

the tracks off of the rails off of the lines you could you could get by with it you could kind of

vaguely feel like if you're riding on that train or you're in the station for a moment you kind of

almost feel like you're in a European country or in an Asian country or like any country that's

actually developed but then of course you then you get it off and you kind of

reality asserts itself but you know it's just not my first choice I'm not ruling it out but

it's not it's not a place I really want to be and it's it's frustrating so you know I mean

of the places that I just was I don't think I'd want to live in Vietnam although living there

would be extremely cheap extremely cheap but I don't think I want to do it I could live in

Bangkok I could like I know a couple people there and the cost of living is actually ridiculously low

and if I had some kind of source of income that was external from the country and I live there

I get them pretty comfortably pretty easily but it's not my first choice I also feel like tie

so I'd eat crap Capcom crap I'm probably fucking up the tones but you know you could you could learn it

you could learn it you could I if I started working while I was there on reading it and I definitely

did not get the whole alphabet or I guess it would be more of like an average and I don't even know

if it counts as an abjad but basically they have the consonants and they have vowels are kind of

separate and they float around the consonants which is sort of like Arabic or Hebrew or

an abjad so maybe it is I've taken linguistics a couple of times undergrading grad level and I don't

remember but you know it's it's a phonetic thing that the tones are not like terrible terrible

Vietnamese Vietnamese I feel like I'm botching that that one the tones were really fucking hard

I like and my memory is not what it once was which is not helping but I struggled so hard there

just to say thank you and hello and the basic basic shit and in Thailand a people speak English

very well and be I think Thai is tractable or more so but you know and then China was nice

I could see living there I could I mean don't get me wrong I could live in a lot of places

but I could live there it wouldn't be that hard the the great firewall would be a fucking annoying

pain in the ass it was it was irritating as a guest as a visitor but actually live there just like

and then you think about it you're like I don't know the the one thing I really am not a huge fan of

there and you know then Vietnam as well is just like the pushiness and like it to contrast it like

in Japan people cute and like queuing is a very big thing and it's really nice it's really

fucking nice and orderly and it works well with my personality you don't have to you don't have to be

like super assertive or really push or anything like that you could just kind of comfortably

follow the rules and the rules are you know some of them are not explicit but they're easy to understand

for the most part and if you do that then things just kind of work fairly smoothly within reason

obviously there is a lot of bureaucracy and that could have said I could totally live in Japan

but in China you know like people are not queuing and they're like it kind of was ridiculous

it's ended on the city obviously like the character would be different but that very generally like

people would just be standing in front of the elevator or standing in front of the door when the

subway opened and the doors would open and they just walk right in while people are walking out

it was the most ridiculous like I wouldn't record it because you know obviously you got a lot of

pictures of people there that you couldn't get permission from and they probably wouldn't

super excited about it but just the experience of it was so fucking ridiculous and wild

it's just like any any more non-avelists a lot of fires because I used wild and ridiculous a lot

but it was it was so just absurd like if you guys would just stand off to the side and let people

off the fucking train or off the elevator we could all get in and out way faster and way easier

but instead what you're doing here is just kind of weird annoying and to be fair I've talked

to some people about this and it sounds like a lot of this might be kind of a holdover of like

older generations had more scarcity and so it's like when you have scarcity you feel like you're

going to get left out of things so your impulse is sort of like the chickens like clamoring over

each other to get food versus you know if things have not been scarce for a while you've been

kind of okay you could be very orderly because you're assured that you know being civil and

following these rules is not going to fuck you out of whatever you need it's a thing that I don't

like about the US because you do need not do the same extent but you definitely need to push your way

in a little bit and I'm not a fan of that it's not it's not natural to me it doesn't feel like I can

do it but it's not a thing that I want to do it's just not you know that so anyway of all the places

that I was and and also like I could live in South Korea but I don't think I'd want to as much

either I'm really I'm all the places that I've been on this trip Japan and particularly Tokyo

although I could take a live in Kyoto I could feel like to a lesser extent but I could live in Osaka

I could and probably some other cities I wouldn't want to live in the Gano

Nagano I don't know how you'd say it exactly but yeah I wouldn't want to live there

although visiting is nice but you know there are there are places I wouldn't want to live in one of the

sea the little villages that they don't have any public transit and it's just like one bus line that

goes down it that I don't have a pass on I want to be someplace where you know there's not just

a shinkansen station but a nice metro and you can get around easily and all that kind of stuff but

I could live there I could live in France I could live in Spain but I think the thing you know I want to be

someplace I don't need like a massive massive space but someplace fairly comfortable

it could be like the size this room that I'm in now is probably I don't even know it feels like it's

like at least 32 maybe even 40 square meters the hotels that I was in in Japan were like 20

something square meters and maybe maybe they got up to 30 I don't know and some of them but

it's it's interesting to me how much more efficient they were with space because like here is a big hotel

the bathroom is huge but it feels not that big whereas their everything was objectively very small

but the use of space felt like they were at least trying they just that side but I don't know what

the size would be but you know having a place and having like a home base where you actually can just like

keep your shit would be really nice having a like this is just where I go and I can chill out here

having my whiteboard would be a big thing being able to cook would be a big thing

having a walkable city that I can just explore and yeah at a certain point you do explore

enough that you've kind of like I've gone to New York enough times or I've gone to Paris enough times

that I think I've gotten to Tokyo enough times I'll eat Kyoto as well but I don't really I'm not

saying I don't need to explore it because like all of these places you could spend years and years

going to try different restaurants and going to different neighborhoods and getting to know places

but at the same time you know on a large scale on a sort of like macro scale I've kind of

yeah I've gone through all the around these small I've looked around I kind of know what's

where it might take me a little while they're kind of reorient myself but I basically

basically pretty comfortable with the cities you know it's a different thing living someplace

than visiting it but being someplace where if I wanted to go for a walk or take the metro I could

if I want to get to the airport it's not that big of a deal if I want to you know do just like

any kind of day-to-day stuff I want to have a grocery store like five ten minutes walk away

that's a big hard requirement for me I'd like to have I mean ideally would be like a

but these are really but you know like some kind of a bakery nearby would be really nice

having a coffee shop nearby although if I was living someplace

kind of feel like I should just get into if that making my own coffee well at least yeah

I go back and forth on the cake up idea but those pods are annoyingly kind of nice and convenient

when I say that I mean you know generally not necessarily specifically that but

there's something nice about that it's not it's not great coffee but you know or

or you know they have these machines that just make the coffee for you and kind of

do the full capuccino for you it's not a great cat it's not the best capuccino you've ever

had but if you press the capuccino button and something comes out that's pretty capuccino is

it's yeah you hit the espresso button and it's like it's not it's not the best espresso you've

ever had but if you are just like having your coffee in the morning it's good enough

or or even like I had when I lived in Paris I had a French press I still have that French press

but it's at my sister's place right now actually but I had a friend a little French press

and I had you know I just got like vacuum packed ground coffee I didn't even use a grinder there

of a cartoon war I don't remember which which flavor it was or which kind but it was not like

the best coffee in the world but it was pretty good and then I got one of the things yeah you just

get like a box of milk that is ultra high temperature pasteurized so you don't have to refrigerate it

and you do that and then you have your little pastry you get your punch chocolate in the morning

and it's just lovely it's just like I can be very comfortable and content in that kind of

a situation just you know like I definitely like I've had some people suggest like work where you're

traveling I don't know I just like anything that you do that you really like that you do

like you convert your hobby to something that you're monetizing or like if I started getting paid

to record these things I'm sure it would become work at a certain point and it would become painful

although I I don't know I I really go back and forth I'm like what can I do because I

there's a temptation to try to do consulting work although I haven't had a lot of offers on consulting

work recently definitely I haven't had a lot of job offers recently like that there was a time when

I was getting the upper release study stream of them and I had people could get me stuff and

I don't know the last few years it's been hard I don't know if it's because of just the overall

economy or like I'm getting older or I'm kind of you know like a little bit of a pain in the

S I'm not a pain in the S but I mean you know like I'm a little outspoken so I'm probably not doing

myself any favors with my social media but you know whatever it is whatever it is maybe my letters and

my CV slash resume are not as good as they could be I don't know but you know I've just been like

getting dead air trying to apply to shit like not even not even rejections just like it's

it's just you send it out and it's gone it just disappears into the void and also like I'm

thinking about it and it's like I've applied to a bunch of stuff I don't even know if I want to

do it if I got it like if a friend who works at Apple and I just like look at that and it's like

you know I mean don't give me wrong I would I would take something now especially if I could

make money for a year or two or a few years but I don't really really want to work there I don't really

want to work in that kind of a job I really like really like the given my brothers what I would do

I like I have a few projects that I can work on that I think would eventually generate money

I would so rather just do that I would so rather just guide myself and work on my own shit and

you know it's just it's really frustrating to see the situation where it's like how do you

how do you make that a thing how do you and I don't know I don't know I'm also like I've had a few

businesses and I'm very I'm very motivated I work hard and I'm self guided and all of this kind of

but the business side of that is not is not me selling is not me dealing with customers is so

like I'm I'm good at talking with people I'm good at explaining stuff that people I'm good at

understanding what they're trying to get or achieve and how to do it but actually just like interacting

with people I get I'm talking like it's making me physically tired just thinking about it right now talking

about it yeah it's like oh it's just it's just horrible and I don't know you think about like

consulting work too and the thing about consulting work is you only have so much time and the consulting

work I don't know I mean this is I guess fundamentally comes down to why so many companies like

monthly subscriptions because they're kind of shitty just in general but or at rent is really it's

pretty pretty pretty fucking shitty but also you know it's sort of a very low effort and a thing so

once you get enough of those you've just got your not made you got your baseline covered and

I don't know I just I just go back and forth on this and it's like I would I would very much

I would like to not have to deal with like selling shit and I would like to not have to deal with

a lot of customer service kind of I just I just fucking hate capital services the thing

if I if I had my like I really have like a magic wand and I can do anything I'd have like

I'd probably just be a fucking professor but in a sense of not constantly chasing after grants

you can write a publication or two a year maybe maybe more if you want to but you don't have

like a huge pressure to and you can work on interesting stuff and maybe I teach a class every year

but probably not too many and I just like I don't know I'm I spent so much time in my life like

working really hard trying to build stuff and like every time I tried to do it every time I wanted to

because I have my own stuff that I want to work on and I couldn't I couldn't figure out how to pay for

that so I tried to do first I tried to raise money for it I couldn't do that and then I got

I did get money for something that was like a side project that was tangentially related to that

that I thought would generate something but it ended up being like I didn't realize like how much

it's fucking expensive to build a physical product and especially like you need to get FCC certified

you need to get you all certified you need to make it so that you know you can you can actually

mass produce it and sell it and all this kind of stuff it's painful and expensive and I raised a

couple hundred thousand for selling like that but I still you know I probably would have needed another

maybe even the same amount to get everything to conclusion to the point where I could actually sell

something and realistically like that was very cheap like if you're a company doing it you'd

spend millions of dollars developing that kind of a product and it's just like I don't know it's

frustrating how like what what is it that I can I because I know I have all these I'm pretty technically

skilled I'm pretty able to do a lot of stuff I just don't know what I could do that would pay

decently enough that I wouldn't hate I wouldn't be miserable and and that yeah I could just

you know say I can't see you know I can't see something that would pay enough to be okay

and not be miserable and you know like you started adding a few constraints there and it's just like

what would you do I don't fucking know I don't fucking know I'm I'm an husband another

think about this and kind of rumenate on it and then I will I won't make a longer one on that one

someday but I think that's probably enough for now I'm already in the two hour six minute mark so

that's that's a pretty long one of these I think it's yeah I do understand that this can be useful as

a sleep aid but I probably probably don't need to listen to to me blathering on about this

and like debating with myself over what I want to do and you know like just going back it finishing

up the thought on the if you're consulting you can only you only have so much time right you'll

me you can't like consult on a million things at once so you can't really scale that business

and so you can only make what you make from it it's not like you're making a product where you

can just mass produce the product it's not like you're making a online service where you can just

sell it to more customers or something like that you're just making something and you're

getting paid to do a certain amount of work and then you do it and then it's done and then

what comes next and it's just like that what comes next thing sucks and then are you how do you get

paid enough because with a consulting I and granted I I know I'm not a great negotiator and my

former business partner very clearly was not but yeah it's just like I I never could negotiate

enough for that that it would really cover the expenses involved in doing that and on top of that it was

just like you know you're once a job is done you don't have a lot of ongoing you know like

if you nice to have maintenance they just baked into that kind of stuff or something so that you

just have a reliable baseline that you can you can pull from instead of you know we would get

big contracts and then we'd have no contracts for a while and when you have no contracts for a while

it really fucks you it's really it's lumpy it's like any kind of freelance work it's very lumpy

you get people doing these you know net 90 kind of things so you do the work and then

you build them and then you get paid like three months later maybe and soften if you get paid it's

after a fight it's like you don't there there there are customers to be fair I don't want to say

everybody's terrible but there are people who you'll send them a bill send them the invoice and they

will just pay and it's fucking easy and you don't have the fight and it's never a big deal but so

many people like if you do that kind of work you have to fight you have to sit there and go like

fucking pay me fuck you and you know like if you try to negotiate and you figure out what the

actual expenses are and how much something is going to cost most of the people will just like go

I don't want to do that I'm going to just pay some dude and india to do it and you know it's just

irritating it's just fucking irritating and I don't begrudge the person who's not taking enough money

for it who's living someplace for the cost of living is much lower

and you know all this stuff but it's just like it's very fucking annoying the the talk to

somebody and it's like I'm giving you a very good deal here this is cheap like realistically

you should be paying a lot more for it and I'm giving you this and then they feel put upon and like

you know like they're giving you an obscene amount of money for something like if you're a normal

if you're just normal level of rich the cost of developing products is very high and you know

just like me with the switch you know you probably are going to spend into the by the time you're

actually like selling and doing stuff into the millions of dollars that develop physical

long word products and you can depending on what it is if it's something like really simple

and you don't have to do that many iterations prototyping it and it's only mechanical

doesn't have a lot or the electrical part is very simple maybe you can do it a lot cheaper

but you know things get really fucking expensive pretty quickly and you know especially you know

they feel like even if you're doing like CAD you're doing CAD just the price of solid works

is ridiculous the price of all of them is ridiculous and so just paying for that is a lot

just paying for your time is a lot and paying enough to be able to you know actually do the work

and have a little bit more and cover you know other expenses and all this kind of stuff

it's just it's very annoying it's very annoying it makes me like I I keep thinking about trying to

find some kind of like an online monthly recurring thing that I could do even though find that

really gross but you know like just something just something that doesn't it's it's very annoying

I just don't know you know like there's a part of me that kind of wants to make something and sell

that but then I think about like all the stuff that I want to make would take so much time and

money to develop and then after you've got it you know like the manufacturing optimizations and the

cost optimizations and all that kind of stuff more money in time and then at a certain point

you've got it you're making it you're selling it and now it's a sales problem so you've got to

figure out sales and you have to deal with that shit and it's just it's just like so many layers

of pain in the ass and I don't know I don't fucking know I hate I hate that we have to deal with this

shit I just it's it's such a and I know also like I make I'm a cutely aware that I'm speaking

about this from a very privileged place and that you know like for a lot of people the stuff that

I'm complaining about is like a fantasy dream like having a job that like my last job I wasn't

out on a roof in the sun in the summer in Arizona for example that's a big deal and I'm sitting

you're bitching about it but at the same time yeah that's it should be better for all of us it should

just be better for all of us I don't know I think with that I'm I'm not exactly tired but I'm

just like just talking about this stuff is just depressing me and it's I can feel the weight

of it physically so with that hopefully by now you're asleep you're enjoying and you're not

actually hearing this anymore so I'm just going to speak very very calmly and say as ever thank you for

listening and

再见

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