Making Time and Space for What Matters
Hello, again. Recently, I’ve been thinking about Elon Musk’s ongoing coup, American concentration camps, strategy on The Traitors, Lent, seeing Half Dome from extreme distances, spring training, Luka Doncic, and more. LFG.
The Musk Coup Doesn't Feel Real Because it Isn't Televised
I have a pet theory that while the COVID-19 pandemic was terrible for a segment of the American population, a significant chunk of the country simply doesn’t believe the virus killed many people because, understandably, there was minimal footage of overwhelmed hospitals broadcast on television, which means those images haven’t permeated popular culture. Similarly, Elon Musk’s ongoing Trump-enabled coup is basically just a niche story among highly engaged politics watchers, and is not dominating the national consciousness, because it’s untelevised.
Virtually everything Musk and his unqualified henchmen have been doing under the auspices of the “Department of Government Efficiency” — an initiative that amounts to a bunch of guys carrying out unconstitutional orders from the president, and even on its own terms overlaps in purpose with the Government Accountability Office — is illegal and will almost certainly do far more harm than anything else. There is more evidence Musk is using Trump’s acquiescence to enrich himself and punish his enemies than that he is seeking to help the American people. And unfortunately, most national Democrats are either too feckless or too helpless to get this shit on television in a compelling way.
As it stands now, Trump and Musk are going to cause massive upheaval and disaster for the American people on multiple fronts. Nonsensical economic policy meeting indiscriminate civil service purges is a recipe for destruction, but none of it is very telegenic until and unless passionate people make it so. We could wait for the deluge and ask Trump voters how they like drowning, recognizing that many would pledge loyalty to Trump even as they’re dragged below by the results of his whimsical leadership. Or we could fight to prevent it from happening in the first place.
I don’t have the answer how, but I fantasize that someone is figuring out a way to put on normie television how pathetic Musk and his toadies are. After all, much of what counts for national news and fodder for the online discourse machine still flows from legacy media. Show that he sucks in a way that makes people decide for themselves that he sucks. Put all the dumbasses on television, explaining that they’re ripping the wires out of the walls of government, not at all concerned about how the whole is held together. Millions of people will suffer because of the Trump administration’s mismanagement, but in order to fight back, at minimum they ought to be primed to take up their torches and pitchforks for Trump and Musk before the suffering reaches its peak.
It’s a Concentration Camp
Among the many outrages being perpetrated by the Trump Administration, the construction of a concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay (and use of a concentration camp in Panama) feels worthy of more attention than it has received so far. The existing prison at Guantánamo is a moral failure to begin with, a detention facility located where it is precisely because it is in a legal gray zone, where the American government can functionally store people indefinitely while skirting basic notions of judicial fairness.
Imprisoning tens of thousands more people at the military installation, as Republicans openly aim to do, is a clear match for the textbook definition of a concentration camp: an “internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order. Persons are placed in such camps often on the basis of identification with a particular ethnic or political group rather than as individuals and without benefit either of indictment or fair trial.”
Moreover, recognizing it is a concentration camp and calling it by that name is an important step toward confronting and fighting the people willing to implement it. Trump and his sycophants regularly dehumanize migrants with the clear intention to reinforce support for cruel and inhumane treatment. Put all together, the full picture of dehumanizing language and movement toward concentration camps is an obvious repeat of authoritarian governments around the world, past and present.
Multiple people have already accused Trump of supporting concentration camps, particularly during his first term, when news of thousands of children being separated from their parents gained national attention — actions that continue to have catastrophic effects to this day. One person is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, in 2019, plainly referred to the Trump administration running concentration camps. At that time, she was criticized heavily for it, largely on the grounds that it seemed to minimize the Holocaust, but to her credit she continued using the term.
As Michael Zank, at the time the director of Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, explained, in response to the criticism Ocasio-Cortez was receiving, she was accurate and the term was appropriate because it accurately described the administration’s actions and its stated motivations, but also because it caused people to take notice, and once they noticed, they could no longer be indifferent to the atrocities being committed by their government, like bringing migrants to the prison and producing no information about them or whatever charges they may be facing.
It’s a concentration camp. It should be stopped.
Also: These people are cruel as fuck.
A Piece of Encouragement for Lent
I’m fortunate to have lots of connections to people doing good work at Catholic schools, and as a Catholic, myself, I appreciate the friend who regularly pushes back against harmful popular conceptions of Lent. Instead of thinking about the season through a deprivation framework — giving up things — which can veer into disordered relationships with food and other behaviors, they preach that Lent is more about making time and space for what matters. For example, can you switch from disposable bottles to one reusable bottle over the course of Lent? And can you keep it up after Easter?
Going to Mars is Stupid
A short time ago, I finished the book “Mickey7” by Edward Ashton (the film version, directed by Bong Joon-Ho, is scheduled for release later this year). I’ve gotten more into sci-fi in recent years, and this has sci-fi elements, but the primary questions the novel explores are what makes a life belong to an individual, and what makes life valuable. There’s a lot going on the story, even as it clocks in under 300 pages, but the main thing to know is that the protagonist, Mickey, lives in an exploratory colony on a distant planet, and his job is to be the guy who does the most dangerous jobs. If he dies, his body is re-generated and his mind is re-uploaded from the last time he saved a copy.
It’s wildly entertaining. The author’s background in the sciences shows through in how the narrative deftly accounts for things like radiation exposure and near-light-speed collisions with deep-space particles. And I kept returning to the same thought throughout, which is that, in an oblique way, the book also acts as a plain explanation for why exploring other planets is a terrible idea.
Every complication the colonists face is solvable, but only with fantastical technology or a wildly expensive or resource-intensive solution. As fun as it may be to think about attacking those problems, overcoming them, and exploring the stars, the practical obstacles to bringing people safely to another planet are such that it’s probably not worth our time and effort to try, despite the specious claims of wealthy charlatans.
There are multiple novels arguing that Earth is the only planet we have, notably ones written by Kim Stanley Robinson, but if you need a straightforward non-fiction entry on why interplanetary travel is a bad idea, I highly recommend this essay. As with “Mickey7,” the known problems with interplanetary travel are solvable. However, the essay makes an extremely compelling case that even if we solve the most basic problems, it’s not clear to what end, beyond saying we did it.
Hell, Yeah! Baseball is Back!
Spring training games began this week, which is as good a time as any to share my story about attending spring training in Scottsdale, Arizona, as a child, and the related intrusive thought that keeps popping up thanks to a huge pop star’s first major hit song.
The story isn’t all that remarkable, but it’s illustrative of how spring training has changed over the years. I don’t recall the year, but it was probably 1988 when my dad first took me to Arizona for a week to watch practice baseball in the desert. I was in elementary school, and had already been playing organized baseball for a couple years thanks to my parents lying about my age so I could play up.
Anyway, my dad and I had been there for a couple days and watched multiple games involving the Giants and A’s, and during a lull in action, he took me to a side field to play catch in foul territory. That’s right: there were no fences or anything preventing people walking on pathways at whichever complex we were visiting from simply heading out on the fields, themselves. And while we were playing catch, a bunch of players in Giants uniforms lined up along the right field foul line and started playing catch, right next to us. This went on for a few minutes, and I don’t remember why we stopped — I assume we had to get to a game — but Joe Price noticed we were throwing a ratty baseball, so he tossed us a pearl.
That’s the story, and it’s something that can’t happen today because spring training is much closer to regular season Major League Baseball than the open practices they were back then, with exorbitant ticket prices (for practice games!) and closed-off practice fields the norm.
As for the intrusive thought, on that trip my dad took me to the Pink Pony, a regular spring training hangout for ballplayers and journalists. I don’t remember seeing any players, but I do remember the chocolate mousse. Anyway, the restaurant has apparently closed and reopened in multiple incarnations over the years, and from what I gather it’s simply not the same as back in the day because players aren’t going and mingling at the bar.
This all comes rushing back to me thanks to Chappell Roan. If you’re unaware of who she is, she’s a big pop star right now with several hits, and perhaps her signature song, the one she recently performed at the Grammys, is called “Pink Pony Club.” It’s great.
I can’t be the only person making this connection.
Another Thing About the Luka Doncic-Anthony Davis Trade…
I read more than I should have from the avalanche of takes dropped about the Luka Doncic-for-Anthony Davis trade, and I’m in agreement with just about everyone else in thinking the Dallas Mavericks made an incredibly poor decision, barring information that has yet to come to light. That Davis got hurt almost right away stinks for him and for Dallas fans, but even before then, just about every NBA fan I’ve read thought it was baffling. What I don’t think has quite gotten enough attention is that after the decision was made that they were willing to trade a 25-year-old All-NBA guard who had been the best player on a Finals team just last season, the Mavericks chose the wrong team with which to negotiate.
I’ll go along with the notion that allowing word of negotiations to go public, let alone starting a bidding war, was unrealistic because Doncic’s representatives would then have leverage to dictate where he would go, thereby reducing what other teams would be willing to give up for the player. However, choosing the Los Angeles Lakers didn’t make sense if Mavericks General Manager Nico Harrison was actually interested in maximizing his return.
I’m no NBA cap expert, but as best I can tell, the Phoenix Suns could have traded Devin Booker and multiple picks for Luka, and, if offered, should have been willing to do so. Harrison bluntly stated that he wanted a big man to complement point guard Kyrie Irving, but the bigs the Mavericks have been using thus far have been pretty good! Totally setting aside that Irving is not exactly a paragon of consistency and reliability, Booker is 28 years old, a legitimately great scoring wing, and has some ball-handling ability, too. Alongside Klay Thompson (when healthy, even though he’s aging), that’s a dangerous set of perimeter players, plus whatever picks Dallas should have been able to command from a Phoenix team that would have gotten back a true lead guard with the goal of figuring out how to make the offense work between Luka, Kevin Durant, and Bradley Beal.
Or what about the Brooklyn Nets? Again, I’m no cap expert, but a deal centered on Nic Claxton (decent defensive big man!) and DeAnthony Melton (makes the money work!) plus Brooklyn’s hoard of picks should have been more attractive than the deal Dallas actually got. Brooklyn is going nowhere this year, but Luka is precisely the kind of player teams should shell out everything they have to acquire, and I’m certain they would have. If they stopped there, Dallas would have had a crowded front court, just like they do with Davis, but Claxton, Dereck Lively II, or Daniel Gafford would each be tradeable, and in this scenario they would have a tremendous haul of draft picks from Brooklyn with which to build for Irving’s decline or departure.
I won’t go into more teams, but suffice to say Nico Harrison is probably going to be looking for a new role before the end of next season.
“AI” Doesn’t Do Search
There's a functional difference between search results and a search answer that chat bots provide, and that is the feigned certainty that chat bots offer. It seems weird that this might have to be explained, but the answers you get from queries to different “AI” chat bots will almost inevitably be single answers, whereas most actual search engines return lists of results which readers must parse and process in order to draw a conclusion.
On the one hand, there is value to spitting back the correct answer and only the correct answer to certain queries — it would be bad if a search engine received the question “what is 2+2?” and presented multiple options (see note at the bottom of this item). But on the other hand, it’s also bad if a search engine receives a question for which there is no objectively true answer and presents just one option as objectively true. Similar to how writing is not only about creating an objectively understandable text as an end product, but is just as much a process for the writer(s) to organize thoughts and information, so too is querying a search engine for information. Taking out the opportunity for the reader to see multiple pieces of information and make an assessment, themselves, is bad because it discourages the reader from engaging with the question and possible answers, and therefore discourages critical thought.
So, what to do about this? An easy step is changing your browser’s default search engine to default to Google web results only. I did this a while ago, and literally the only generated or otherwise “special” result I miss on my modified Google search is the calculator that pops up when you search “calculator”. But even that is hardly an issue because to get there I simply click the All tab on Google. Defaulting to web results has a pleasantly retro feel because you don’t get all the slop Google forces onto its regular results pages, and I am free to browse the results and think about them.
Semi-related: Are you aware of all the considerations necessary to create a quality calculator app?
I Love Viewsheds
One of my favorite factoids — which likely impresses only that tiny percentage of people who know California geography really well and are intrigued by thinking about the layout of the Sierra Nevada range — is that you can see Half Dome, in Yosemite Valley, from just outside San José (here's another wild photo construction). It is also visible from Turlock, in the Central Valley.
There are some free tools that identify what’s known as a viewshed for any location on Earth. Though I’m pretty sure Manhattan buildings would block the view, the Statue of Liberty might be visible from about 43 miles to the north. Though there aren’t many peaks around, Willis Tower is visible from a few points more than 60 miles away, in Michigan. Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak in mainland North America east of the Mississippi River, is in North Carolina and visible from points in South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky, some more than 100 miles away.
If I’m not careful, I could lose entire days to this.
This is a Newsletter
In recent months, I have driven myself a little crazy noticing when people refer to newsletters or blogs by the platform upon which they are hosted. You don’t have to do that!
29 Sunset Missives is (currently) built upon Blogger for the web and distributed on email by Mailchimp. I am pretty certain that it wouldn’t ever occur to you to refer to this blog/newsletter as “a Blogspot” or “a Mailchimp”, yet plenty of writers with whom I agree about a lot of things, politically, socially, and stylistically, commonly refer to “a Substack” or “a Beehiiv newsletter”.
The only time you ought to refer to a website’s or newsletter’s CMS is when it is relevant to the story you are telling. Otherwise, you are doing unpaid marketing. There are accurate and informative words for those publications that are not the underlying platforms’ brand names. If you feel it’s more accurate and informative to refer to “Paul Krugman’s Substack” than “Paul Krugman’s newsletter”, I don’t know what to tell you other than that, again, that is a victory for Substack’s marketing team because you are choosing to elevate the underlying platform over the fundamental unit of publication, which is the newsletter, blog, or website.
Unfortunately, I think we’re too far gone, as a culture, to refer to posts on any given social media platform by the generic “post on social media” in most cases because the specific platform where one chooses to post is fundamentally tied to the message’s meaning, thus truly making it so that it’s most informative to the reader to specify where it was posted.
But it’s not too late for blogs and newsletters. This is a newsletter. Call it that.
Are You a Faithful, or Are You a Traitor?
Recently, I finished Season 1 of The Traitors US and Season 2 of The Traitors UK. For the unfamiliar, it’s a reality television show modeled roughly on classic party games. As I’ve watched, I’ve had two persistent thoughts: First, the Faithful tend to play in a highly illogical manner, and second, the game mechanics are extremely flimsy. (I don’t think any spoilers follow.)
Whenever I’ve gotten that twinge of secondhand embarrassment when a Faithful accuses someone of treachery and tries to explain their thinking, I remember a truism of memory science: Memory is “a transcription of history created by multiple people’s perceptions and assumptions that’s constantly changing.” Generally, the Faithfuls vote on who to banish from the game based on the behaviors they observe and, really, the vibe they get from various other contestants. This is terrible strategy born of a common error; too many people overestimate their ability to decipher others’ internal thoughts and motivations. The Faithful do this because there is precious little actionable information in the game. After all, how do you know if someone is lying about being a Traitor when, if they are halfway decent at this, there is nothing in their actions that differentiates Traitors from Faithfuls?
Strategy-wise, the two most important elements of the game are lasting until the end without being banished or murdered, and a distant second is banishing Traitors as early as possible in order to reduce the odds that one of them reaches the final stages. Therefore, if I were cast to play the game, whether Faithful or Traitor, I would embrace randomness as a key tenet of my gameplay. As a Faithful, I would aim to convince the others that in the early stages of the game we do not have enough signal among all the noise to confidently pick out Traitors, and that actively hunting them, grasping at poor information, and inflating the import of every detail actually plays into the Traitors’ hands by giving them something to work with as they plan who to murder.
So, in the first few banishment ceremonies, I would refrain from accusing anyone and simply who to banish in advance, at random. If I can get six, seven, or more people on my side, we might even be able to control the vote this way. And I strongly suspect it would increase our odds of getting a Traitor early.
I recognize there’s some risk to this. I’d have to turn a bit of a magic trick to convince other Faithfuls that this is beneficial to us and not a Traitor ploy. Given that I don’t think there is anything anyone can do to definitively prove themselves a Faithful, my simple answer for whether it’s a Traitor ploy or not would be that I so believe in this that I would gladly put my own name in the hat to pull at random, so long as others are joining me in the process. And because it’s random, I might actively say out loud, to any Traitors in the room, if this is how we’re banishing people now, then they should murder people they think are holding back the group in the missions with the added upside that they won’t leave any tracks to uncover.
After we get to about 10 people in the game, if I were still in it, my gameplay would necessarily change. At that point, we could start trying to work out how Traitors might be maneuvering, socially. But I would still embrace randomness and give up a certain feeling of control over my destiny by choosing a partner with whom I would propose an alliance: we will seek to be the last two people in the game, no matter what, even if treachery is involved. That is, we will agree that we are committing to each other as Faithfuls early, and we will support each other no matter what the rest of the way, working together until the end, when we will eliminate everyone else until we are the only two left, voting out all others as best we can in order to reduce the odds there is a Traitor still in the game. Ending with three or more players left is a terrible decision for that reason alone, and Faithfuls should whittle it down if allowed. And if the partner I chose is a Traitor, then randomness got me and it is what it is, and I’ll get rich as a minor celebrity from being on the show.
As a Traitor, I’m less sure of how I would proceed, but I would still embrace randomness to my advantage. The primary way that would happen is that, when asked, I would spread my true belief that it is extremely hard to pin down who the Traitors are based on their behaviors alone, that Faithfuls need to find actions as evidence wherever possible. But as a measure of subterfuge, I would present that the conclusion from that insight is that we should prioritize voting out the people who are worst at missions or act most selfishly (seeking shields instead of attempting to raise the prize pot) and steer the conversations away from gossip and into analysis of skill, while still openly keeping an eye on who might be Traitors based on the scraps of info we can gather from conversations, et cetera. In the turret, I would then advocate murdering the most ruthless players, the ones who see the game dispassionately and would employ strategy over the emotion of bonding with people, so that at the end stages, we have a majority of people operating on gut feelings, hunches, and raw emotions.
Furthermore, as a Traitor, I would seek out a Faithful partner in secret and make a bond to support each other through to the end. Because, as a Traitor, the only way to ensure you win is to get down to two people. If the other person is a Faithful, then you get everything.
Finally, as numerous Redditors have noted, the missions rarely have anything to do with figuring out whether someone is a Traitor, and what the hosts say to players at various points has far too munch influence on the game. If I were a producer, of course I would be wary of turning the game into The Mole, but I think there’s room for introducing Mole-like elements.
For instance, what if the Traitors had their own prize pot? The way it would work is that each morning the Traitors would be given missions in parallel to the main missions. Faithfuls would be aware these are happening, but never told what the Traitors’ missions are. They could be any number of things: perhaps they’re tasked with sabotaging the main mission. Or they could be whimsical challenges that risk making the Traitors look silly or odd, like getting at least two Faithfuls to say one of their parent’s names out loud. Maybe the Traitors would not add the money raised from the main mission to their pot unless they accomplished their side mission. Maybe, if successful, they could add a bonus to their pot. Maybe if they succeed in sabotaging a main mission, they get the full prize pot, and if they fail they only get half the money raised. In all cases, at the end of each mission, during the wrap-up, the full group would be told how they did in the main mission, and whether the Traitors succeeded or failed in their parallel mission.
There are all sorts of strategic elements to this. The Traitors might choose to simply not do a side mission if they deem it too risky. Faithfuls would be put on extra alert, trying to figure out what the side missions might be. And failures in the missions would therefore have actual teeth.
Anyway, The Traitors is a great show and I will continue thinking about it way too much.
My Book Has a Title and a Cover
As mentionedpreviously, I’ve written a novel that I intend to self-publish sometime this year. I’m still cleaning it up, but in the meantime, I’ll share the cover below and tell you the title: “A Hell of a Wedding”.
More to come, but I’m excited to learn as much as I can about self-publishing, and I’m hopeful people will enjoy it.
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Thanks for reading, you crazy kids. Let’s do this again, sometime.
(Photo: Half Dome, viewed from Glacier Point. Taken by the author.)