February Miscellany
Synagogue tales, chemical fire, links, and life updates
February has been a month of blogging.
It’d been some time since I’d published anything substantial when I wrote “Some Disconnected Thoughts.” That was on February 1, and since then, I’ve posted every day. My goal is to keep the streak going through the rest of the month.
I have two motivations: first, it feels good to write—it’s helped me think through some interesting questions. Second, check out this graph:
It’s been a little bumpy, but there’s an unmistakable pattern: more posts drive more clicks, and the clicks make me feel all warm inside.
On Synagogue
I’ve been attending Saturday morning services at the local Conservative congregation for a few weeks now. I haven’t been a regular churchgoer1 since the age of 11, but I still know most of the prayers well. The experience of prayer is really moving—chanting in an ancient language, surrounded by dozens of voices in harmony. Plus, it’s nice to practice my Hebrew reading and pronunciation, and to get righteously angry at those who pronounce their Rs in the nasal American style.
I also happen to like the congregation’s rabbi a lot. He can be long-winded, but is exactly as full of wisdom and thoughtfulness as you’d stereotypically expect. He graduated from Princeton, spent some time in academia, and was working toward his PhD when he switched to rabbinical school. For a few months last year, when I wasn’t attending services at all, I would schedule a meeting with him every couple of weeks just to chat.
And after services are over, my mom, sister, and I go downtown for lunch. Usually to Joe’s Pizza—it’s the real deal; they’ve only got about a half dozen locations: all the others in NYC, and one here.
Of course, not all is perfectly well.
There’s a local group which sets up a protest outside the synagogue each morning. Their political philosophy is a seemingly inexplicable mix of America First and Palestinian Liberation, but the throughline quickly becomes clear: antisemitism. Here’s a picture I got of them last Saturday:
I can make out the messages on six signs:
“No More WARS for Jewish Interests”
“Jews Out of Palestine”
“Jews Burn Palestinians ALIVE!”
“Gas Chambers? REALLY?!”
“Are Jews above criticism?”
“Boycott Israel”
No one from the synagogue pays these guys any attention because they’re obviously ridiculous and don’t seem to pose an imminent threat. But I’m easy to goad into argument, so here are my responses:
If wars were being fought by America solely because Jews wanted them to be fought, yeah, that’d probably be bad. However! I’m gonna need a mountain of evidence to be convinced that’s happening.
Out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, sure thing.2 Out of the entire Levant, I think it’s a bad idea.
Probably this has happened, given the Israeli military’s use of phosphorus munitions. But as an unfortunate consequence of all-out war, certainly not as specific policy.
Yes, really!
No, and also it sure doesn’t seem like anyone thinks they are.
Phew.
On to more interesting things.
Chemical Fire
My dad was walking through the hallway to his room the other night, singing some song to himself, getting ready to go to bed. As soon as he reached the door, he started to make somewhat panicky swearing noises. He kept making them, so I pulled myself away from my desk and went to see what was up.
A lithium-ion battery had caught fire!
Some chintzy phone-charging brick was coughing out smoke, and my dad was running around looking for sand.
As it turns out, baking soda will do in a pinch—the fire was put out, but awful-smelling smoke had spread through much of the house. We dug some fans out of the basement, opened a ton of windows, and got ventilating.
It worked! By the next morning, the air was clear and unsmelly.
Here’s the thing, though—potentially combustible lithium batteries are all around us. I happen to be a weirdo, so in my case, there’s actually just an old computer battery sitting in a cardboard box under my bed. But we all have chintzy old electronic devices that are slowly decaying. We all have double-As hidden deep in some cabinet.
Our lives remain quite fragile. Keep some baking soda on hand.
What I’m Reading
In Which I Declare War On Beloved Entertainer Bo Burnham. This is a real masterpiece. I never found Burnham all that compelling, but this gives me more reason to update in a negative direction.
cuts to the motivation behind doomsday, “it’ll all be over soon”-type rhetoric: it’s a cop-out. An excuse not to be grateful for what you have, and a way to avoid thinking hard about your future and goals. I happen to be very guilty of this.Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff. This was recommended to me by my uncle years ago, so when I stumbled on it in a bookstore about a week ago, I bought it right away. I’m really loving it: it’s funny, witty, and at times, even informative.
The Mismeasure of Man. I haven’t actually started reading this yet, but I mean to quite soon. It’s a reply to Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve, which I also haven’t read. I know the gist of the debate, but am looking forward to seeing the arguments themselves.
How Difficult is Philosophy? Answer: extremely!
lays out how philosophy is ridiculously hard even for the philosophers who’ve trained in it extensively. Of course, if it’s so hard for philosophers to do philosophy well—how impossible must it be for non-philosophers?Reason Magazine. My parents bought me a print subscription as a Hanukkah present, and the March issue arrived the other day. A few pieces of note:
Google Is Big. Is That Bad? Apparently, a lot of modern antitrust legislation and caselaw is the result of Louis Brandeis’ efforts. His philosophy was best summed up as “bigness is bad.” Damon Root argues instead that we should follow Justice Stephen Field and adopt a policy summed up as “badness is bad.” If a given monopoly “disturbs no neighborhood, infects not the air, and in no respect prevents others from using and enjoying their property as to them may seem best,” what right does the government have to step in?
Love, Money, and Surrogacy. Some couples that have a hard time getting pregnant will hire a gestational surrogate: a woman who’ll carry their baby to term for them via IVF. To me and to Vanessa Brown Calder, this means a happy outcome for all parties. To fringes on the right and the left, this is a terrible offense against God / nature / mankind / womankind. Maybe I’ll dig into the moral philosophy around surrogacy soon, but for now, I’d rather err on the side of reproductive freedom.
The End of Rent Control in Argentina. Javier Milei is global libertarianism’s darling right now. And for good reason! His regulation- and spending-slashing strategies seem to be effective at reducing inflation, stabilizing the peso, and bolstering the labor market. Most impressive, though, are positive changes in the housing and rental market. Argentinian rent control was a spectacular socialist nightmare, barely resembling rent control in most of the rest of the world, but the results of Milei’s deregulation are strong evidence that simply letting landlords and tenants come to mutually beneficial agreements can have good outcomes.
Can Ultimate Frisbee Heal the Middle East? Probably not! But some German and American aid workers have had success introducing the game to various Kurdish and Palestinian populations. I like Ultimate enough, and have known some very good players (like, US-national-juniors-team good) who are also very good people—it’d be wonderful if it could lead to any degree of healing in the MidEast.
Everyone's A Based Post-Christian Vitalist Until The Grooming Gangs Show Up. Scott Alexander delivers an SSC-reminiscent thrashing of right-wing morons who talk out of their ass and bend over backwards to justify the suffering of innocent children.
What Else I’m Up To
I promised a lot of different pieces in the last linkpost, and they’re pretty much all still on the docket. But I’ll add a few more:
God is scary and unsettling. A reply to this annoying article, basically: the Gods of most religious traditions are real dicks. I think our priors on God being very beneficent should be low, and Bentham’s loony theodicies tend to be unconvincing. Plus, reality without God has its own charm.
What the hell is Block Blast? This question came up in a recent Lukethoughts column. I’m looking into it, and hopefully will have something interesting to say soon.
On Caregivers. The question of parental obligations to their children came up in the comments of my post on love. I’d really like to get to the bottom of this, so may do a write-up in similar style.
Since school is a joke, and since I’ve already applied to colleges, I have nowhere to turn but this blog for external validation. The clicks and the likes and the comments all serve this purpose pretty well, but my egotism knows no end, so here’s some bragging about things I’ve done in the real world:
I entered the High School Math Competition in Modeling with a friend and two of his friends a few months ago. Here’s a repo with the work I did building a model—the three of them mostly helped with the write-up, and by that I mean: my friend did the write-up while his two friends pretended to be helpful. Anyway. We earned an honorable mention! Which puts us in… the top 45% of entries. Hm.
I also entered the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad in January. This was a three hour test solving some really interesting linguistic problem-solving questions (deciphering country names written in Armenian, for example). My score was good enough to get me into the invitational round, which will be held… at some time? Some soon time? The top 4-8 scorers on the next test will represent the US at the International Linguistics Olympiad. My first round score was 35th highest.
Finally, I took part in Michigan State University’s Alumni Distinguished Scholarship Competition. This consisted of a couple essays and a sort of general-knowledge quiz. I didn’t think I’d done so well, but apparently I did. I’m one of ~100 candidates advancing to the interview stage from an initial pool of ~1000—they plan to give out 45 full-ride scholarships in the end.
Ok! That’s it, I’m done with the self-congratulation!
I think it’s only fair that I now explicitly say: please feel free to brag to me about your own accomplishments. Email, comment, DM, whatever—some penance must be paid for this unbelievable self-centeredness.
Today is an unexpected day-off for me—I can never keep track of all the stupid excuses we have to take long weekends in this country, but it makes each one feel very special.
Happy Presidents Day!
Lukethoughts
(The column whose existence is becoming ever more uncertain! I’m forgetful enough that I tend to ask Lucas for his thoughts only once I start writing the post—which is usually around midnight. He could just proactively write them to me, but that sure is a lot of effort I guess.)
“I don’t like that Siri can hear everything I’m saying.” (Ed. note: Yeah, apocalypse is not far off. Oops! I mean, yes, that’s bad, let’s plan to make privacy laws stronger in the future which absolutely will exist.)
“Everyone should learn how to control their car while skidding (skid on purpose and figure that shit out).” (Ed. note: I don’t know about skidding on purpose! Theoretical knowledge served well enough when it first happened to me: steer into the skid and pump the brakes.)
“Some of my best clothing items come from Costco and I am overjoyed to publicize that information.” (Ed. note: Me too!)
“Synagoguegoer” just doesn’t have the same ring.
More realistically, there’ll need to be some land swaps in the WB, but the sentiment remains.