[Rant] San Francisco State of Mind

Triggered by both the Lions playoff game against the 49ers (the chosen team of my SO) and this posting of photos by Scott Alexander, which needs to be looked at, I have been  thinking of San Francisco a bit. Those photos remind me of Ann Arbor in the 70s.  Is that good? In any event, Keep Austin Weird can't hold a candle.

SF is so well documented as a disaster of filth, crime, and chaos, that it almost certainly has to be not as bad as it's portrayed.  Still, the exodus of businesses continues.  The toy store that was the inspiration for Toy Story is closing out of safety concerns.  

Paul Graham (of y-combinator) is of the belief that it's a matter of replacing just a small number of council members and things will turn around right quickly:  "There is hope for San Francisco. Most people don't realize the extent to which the city's problems stem from just a handful of incompetent supervisors." Perhaps, but as someone born in Detroit and having been close to its history my whole life, I can say cities "recovering" or "turning around" is the exception not the rule.  Detroit was the wealthiest metro area in the U.S. 1949, it took about 15-20 years to destroy it and despite all the effort and good faith and noble words, it's still a disaster and that's not going to change.  There are overwhelmingly more examples like that than there are of big cities turning around.  To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, the end comes very slowly, then all at once.

I was in SF only once, a couple of decades ago when it was still a top tourist destination in the U.S. and I was at an early stage in my traveling phase.  I was thoroughly unimpressed.  It was cold and inconvenient and overpriced.  I saw none of the great beauty that other folks seemed to see. During that time, the big three cities for me were Vegas for the Strip, New York for Manhattan, and New Orleans for the French Quarter.  SF was a nothing-burger by comparison.  I saw no reason to ever go back and haven't.  (The closest I've come since was Carmel-by-the-Sea which is worth a visit.)

And in truth, I think the rest of us will be just fine without a functional SF.  Michigander: "So there is the Golden Gate Bridge, which is 1.7 miles long.  You call that a bridge?  Oh, and there is an island near it?  Alcatraz.  I'm sure that's lovely.  Have fun on your wee little bridge and dire, abandoned prison island."

[Rant] Holiday Ruminations

Like many, I struggle with the holidays.  Not with getting depressed, as many do.  It's that my feelings and approach to them just don't seem to mesh with most other people's. I suspect a great deal of this has to do with not having a family in any conventional sense of the word.  Oh, yes, I was in a family growing up and I still have a brother today, but my family was not a family in the sense of deeply shared familial bonds.  For the most part, my family members didn't really want much to do with each other.

Every holiday has a larger, more noble purpose, typically remembrance of some event or some virtue.  We are supposed to pause and pay respect to something we presumably neglect and leave unappreciated the rest of the year.  Now, for those of you who read regularly, I hope you've picked up on my dedication to gratitude.  That makes me think of the holidays as superfluous.  We should, and I try to, appreciate these things throughout the year.  

But that's me being smug, isn't it?  Or perhaps it's just me being a loner.  Maybe for most people the days off or work and/or school are just the thing they need to re-ignite their gratitude.  Or maybe the key thing is that time off is synchronized with their friends and family, although as we know extended time with family is not necessarily healthy.

Whatever the case, I remain a bit of a fish out of water during the holidays.  For a few decades I spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas alone. Many people react to that with pity, but I was completely fine with it, and even preferred it in a certain sense.  There were ten years or so where I happily spent every Thanksgiving in Las Vegas gambling on football games and hiking in the nearby National Parks.  (In this I was ahead of the fashion.  Vegas used to be empty on Thanksgiving, now it's packed.)  Christmas was a point of calmness -- I was not running around buying last minute gifts, or putting on the mask of familial bliss or answering intrusive questions about my life.  Honestly, I didn't feel like I was missing anything.

Things are different now, and I am working to adapt.  I have been adopted by the S.O.'s family which includes a pile of children and grandchildren and a number of Christmas traditions. The first change was in gift giving.  My broad plan when needed has been to give one gift of either known usefulness or a gift certificate.  The new family takes the opposite tack of many small gifts; enough to fill up the space under a tree and a stocking hung on the wall.  This along with a full-on, multi-course, homemade Thanksgiving dinner and a traditional go out for a movie on Christmas afternoon, takes me well outside the realm of familiarity for me.

But there are benefits of being with loved ones, essentially having more opportunities to do the most important thing there is, which is enhancing the lives of the people you care about.  And the grandkids are a blast -- they basically use me as a combination jungle jim and punching bag. So I will take it, and adapt, and improve at doing the Holidays in a new way.

I don't want to give the impression that I miss my old Holiday freedom or that I have suddenly come to Jesus on the meaning of the Holidays.  It's just different.  There will be plenty of times in the future when I am frustrated with obligations and long for my former freedom.  There will also be plenty of times where I will be delighted to be watching some inane Christmas movie for the fifteenth time because it is the first for one of the grandkids.

In the larger picture, perhaps the real blessing is that I am still changing and learning and appreciative of what I have.  And, so, still living a rich life.

Related: Tanner Greer makes the compelling case for the greatness of Christmas.

[Rant, Music] Sound in Your Skull

Earbuds, how hard should they be? Earbuds are one of those things that I have spent too much time dealing with and trying to get right.  I use earbuds for two things mainly; at the gym up north and walking the dog down south. At the gym I just need standard earbuds, as long as they fit well.  I don't need noise cancellation although it's nice.  Down south I need almost the opposite, essentially I want something open air so I can hear traffic coming and be aware of my surroundings.

Up north I had until recently been using Jabra Elites.  They were fine.  Good sounding workhorses.  I usually charged the case before each session, but even if I didn't I could usually get as much as four hours out of them.  Of late, though they had gotten flaky -- occasionally telling me the battery was low when I had just changed them or, more recently, only one of the two earbuds functioning.  My experience with relatively inexpensive hardware is that once it starts to flake, the end is near, no point in trying to save them.

So I began looking at reviews.  First off, Amazon reviews are notoriously inaccurate and often outright fraudulent.  I have purchased at least one product that included a coupon that promised a $50 amazon gift card to me if I posted a five star review and sent them documentation of doing so.  That 4.7 rating, even if there are thousands of reviews, is suspect.  Secondly, you have to be careful about professional looking review sites, as often as not they are bought and sold, giving good reviews to anyone who will send them free stuff to review, even if the thing sucks.

After a good bit of exploration I came to the conclusion that Anker Soundcore A are the consensus best value.  I took a shot, and they do sound very, very good. Time will tell if they hold up as well as the Jabras.  They have a nifty application that administers a hearing test and adjusts the sound level as needed. That's nice.  My first impression, beyond the beautiful sound is that they are unbalanced -- the left ear is ever so lightly lower volume than the right or perhaps my left ear is weaker, although the hearing test didn't find that. I was hoping for an old fashioned balance control in the app but I couldn't find one.  Maybe it's the seal and I just need to try a different set of silicone pads.  Either way, I have to give the 'buds good marks.  Anker Soundcore A40 lives up to its good rep.

Down South it's a different problem.  The best solution I found was bone conduction headphones.  These transmit music through vibrations to the bones in your ear rather than forcing sound through the ear canal.  Or something like that.  In any event you get to privately hear your music without anything blocking your ears at all.  It's kind of strange at first but then you don't notice it.  The only difference between them and regular earbuds is that you can hear every sound going on around you, which is what I need when walking the ridiculous dog.

My first set was from a company called Kaibo that I bought through their kickstarter. At first they sounded spectacular, I was stunned by how high quality the sound was for bone conduction.  The problem was the damn things would not work.  Half the time only one side would function.  And the touch controls were so sensitive that even just adjusting them on my head would trigger a power down or a song skip or something.  Even when I wanted to take an action, the clicks and swipes to adjust them were so complex and the instructions so inscrutable I couldn't figure it out.  Finally I went onto their support site about the one side cutting out and found it was quite a common complaint.  They offered a workaround that involved moving files on your laptop and performing some sort of ritual that many people reported did no good, and was not available to anyone who didn't have a Windows laptop.  When Mac users asked what they should do, the response was "Find a Windows laptop".

Eventually I got so frustrated with them that I threw them in the trash.  That was my second participation in a kickstarter and both the products I was involved with ended up being trash.

Still, I was sold on bone conduction and the big name in bone conduction is Shokz. I bought their cheapest model because although I was sold on bone conduction, I had a bit of shell shock from Kaibo.  Also because the cheapest model had actual buttons, not touch controls, which I hate.  Well the Shokz work well.  And I appreciate the buttons, but the sound is pathetic.  It almost sounds like mono.  There is very little definition.  It's listenable, but just barely.  Functionally I like the Shokz and I may upgrade eventually in the hopes of better sound quality, but for now I'll live with it as I have spent WAY too much money on earbuds just to get to this point.

I'll stop now having written almost 1000 words about earbuds and wasting a fair amount of your time if you've gotten this far.

Addendum: Speaking of sound, one thing I have noticed is that most of the young people I know seem perfectly happy to listen to music through the horrible tinny speakers on their phones.  I can't stand it.  It sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.  How can you appreciate music that way?

[Rant] Tell You of My Dreaming

For the bulk of my life I thought I didn't dream.  In time I came to understand that I did dream but I had no recall of the dream. My dreams were completely ephemeral, vanishing on waking.  The story in the past few years has gotten more complicated.  Lately, the memory of the details has lasted longer although I still don't retain them for more than a few seconds, I am left with a very distinct impression of the tone of the content.  Not the details of the dream but the underlying theme of it.  It's all very strange. 

Literally every dream I have had in recent years has involved me wanting, planning, or needing to perform some activity or action and not being able to do it.  It could be some innocuous task and I keep getting distracted, or it could be a crucial activity and I'm roadblocked, but whatever the case, as soon as I start to realize I'm being stymied, I wake up.  Within seconds the details are gone, but the impression of the essential motif remains in absolute clarity.  

None of this is in focus, of course.  It's in dreamtime so there are shifts in perspective and rules and behaviors that are irrational, but I can't emphasize enough how clear the underlying message is.  Not just clear, the theme and the memory of the associated frustration is persistent, like actual memories, not a vanishing sensation.  This is very new for me.

These are not recurring dreams.  They are never the same.  It is only the sense of frustration at being unable to complete the task and the anxiety over the failure that is recurring. 

I really don't know what to make of it other than I am acting out comparable real world emotions.  In all likelihood that's all it is, just my anxieties manifesting during sleep.  The odd thing to me is not that I have anxiety dreams -- on more than one occasion in my life I have woken up shouting in panic. The combination of the common theme and persistence is what makes me think it is a meaningful development.

I have no idea what to do with this information. I am merely documenting it. I hope this new journey will lead to something.   But realistically, I expect, be an unsolved mystery.

[Rant, Ann Arbor] Death Watch: San Francisco

Speaking of California, the opposite of the state of OC is the state of San Francisco.  I declared Portland dead last month.  San Francisco is in the ICU:

Hotel rates are up everywhere but in San Francisco.  Time was, San Francisco would top the 10 best places to visit list.  Now it's on the downswing.  In a remarkable example of understatement: "Conventions—previously a major driver of group travel—have still not returned to pre-pandemic levels, a problem some attribute to a decline in street conditions and worries about public safety."  Lol, ya think?

If visitors are fearful, imagine what it must be like for residents.  This story of Eli Steele getting his car broken into is remarkable.

And of course, we have the well known dynamic of business exodus (Nordstrom, Old navy, Whole Foods, Westfield Mall) and related population exodus (tech focused).

None of this is surprising to anyone who has been paying attention to urban dynamics since the turn of the century.  What I will never understand is how deeply people delude themselves about it.  Everybody speaks of it as if it were temporary, just a downturn that will correct itself with maybe a clever policy machination or two.  It won't.  I'm from Detroit; a dying city doesn't turn around.  At best you might manage to cordon off a small downtown segment -- sports team complex, a casino, a key museum might attract some short term visitor money -- and keep it going as a lifeline.  If smart attentive people are elected you may tread water for a year now and then.  But in no way will the city ever recover.  Smart, attentive people have already left the city, so electing smart, attentive people gets less and less likely.

My advice to you: Have no delusions, your city is not coming back. Get out while the gettin' is good.  Your life will be better for it.

One of the best decisions I ever made was to settle in the Ann Arbor area. A mid-size city that is buoyed by the enormous University of Michigan and has been fairly recession proof, Ann Arbor has grown from about 200k when I first moved here in 1978 to about 330k today.  It is statistically very safe, especially for residents who all know where the few points of low income housing are and know where to avoid the homeless. It is also wealthy, which has kept the undesirables from the east priced out of living here.  (That was tongue-in-cheek.  The city immediately to the east is Ypsilanti, which is not particularly safe.  Further east is Detroit.)

But there are concerns.  Recently there has been a spate of violent crime.  Broadly speaking, what little violent crime there usually is in Ann Arbor centers around the aforementioned low-income housing spots and the homeless.  The homeless are a particular problem in Ann Arbor because downtown we have something called the Delonis Center.  Delonis is, to put it glibly, a five-star homeless shelter. Most homeless shelters are horrible places and can be outright dangerous in themselves.  Homeless come from far and wide to shelter at Delonis, and that gives Ann Arbor an outsized portion of crazies in the streets.  It is kept somewhat under control because if they are caught committing crimes or harassing people they can get booted out of Delonis and have to go back to some hellhole, so there is incentive to behave, but let's face it, your standard homeless guy is not a rational actor.  Delonis has been a source of controversy over the years and the balance of wanting to do good and be humane versus public safety and commerce has had its share of challenges.

Being good, woke, liberal folks, the city council has responded to this by forbidding the police to stop vehicles for minor offenses like a broken tail light or tinted front windows (forbidden in MI) because that's racist.  (Evidently today is the day for me to glib.)  It sounds appealing on the face of it.  I mean, I've been pulled over because some cop thought my license plate was too worn and old to be read.  But having seen what well intentioned efforts to curtail police power have done over the years -- from New York City to Portland to San Francisco -- one wonders whether the frustration of a penny-ante annoyance may not be the lesser evil.  Maybe this is a one time thing and Ann Arbor is not going down the road of reacting to crime by just letting it happen, like San Francisco has.  But I worry.  Ann Arbor leadership is full of righteous demagogues just like San Francisco.  It's filled with activists who will happily watch things be destroyed in the name of their deluded notions of fairness.  Maybe, just maybe, it's a coincidence that it coincides with a crime uptick and it's not a baby step toward degradation.

But like I said.  I worry.

[Rant, Dexter] A Moment of Gratitude

The two above posts were rather dire.  I should take a moment to point out how lucky I am and how good I have it.  I no longer live in Ann Arbor proper, and honestly, I don't think I would.  I live on the outskirts of the first city to the west, Dexter.  I don't even really live in the Village of Dexter proper, I live in Webster Township.  A rural enclave with some upper middle class exburb developments.  

Crime is a non-issue for me.  For the most part, so is traffic, barring construction.  I've gotten so used to free movement that if I even have to head into Ann Arbor during work hours I am annoyed at the tiny delays.  Traffic in Savannah is even worse -- one day I'll write about the infrastructure inadequacies down at Southern Headquarters.  Everything I need is literally within a ten minutes drive, except the day job, but I can leverage work from home options there. 

The outdoor activities available are remarkable.  Hiking and biking paths everywhere, including trails through the woods for both bikes and hikes.  Two lakes within ten minutes.  And failing all that, my health club (where I have belonged for 22 years) is 15 minutes out.

There is wildlife everywhere too.  Deer are beyond numerous.  There are bunnies and groundhogs that tramp through my backyard.  Turkey flocks come and peck at their reflections in my basement windows. I have a bike ride I do through some of the gravel roads that takes me past cows and horses and even a llama ranch.  

Winters can be hard, but in truth, they grow more tolerable each year.  I have lived in Michigan my whole life. I have been in the Ann Arbor area for 45 years.  I have been in the Dexter area for 30 of those years.  And I have lived in the same house for 13 years.  I must like it here.   

[Travel, Rant] Scurrying About Down South

I flew down to Southern Headquarters this time.  Interestingly, for the stretch I was down there, Savannah was cooler than Michigan.  In fact, for this entire trip the weather was of the sort that makes you feel that the southern realm is a climate paradise.  My long history tells me that is quite rare in June, but the uninitiated could be fooled. (Michigan was sweltering and dry and I came back to a brown lawn thanks to my sprinklers not yet being turned on.  That's a separate rant.)

The first week was a week of chores.  Mostly gardening.  The SH (Southern Headquarters) features very productive fruit trees in the backyard. The SO (Significant Other) and SSD (Sorta Step Daughter) enhanced those with a spice garden and have since taken gardening to heart.  So the week was taken up with mulching and planting.  Not unpleasant work as chores go, although we left a big part of the project to the professionals.  And the yard is looking good.  The star of the show is a Sunflower that is well over 5 feet tall with lots of growing still to do.

The other chore, if I can call it that, was getting the SO's car situation sorted.  She was buying out her lease, which was set up in Texas prior to moving, so she had to make arrangements to buy the car from a dealer in Georgia and finally get her Georgia driver's license.  If you have any understanding of how the world works, you can already see where this is going.

Buying out the lease was annoying, a complete waste of time.  I fail to understand why a process like this, where a price is already decided on, where boilerplate papers need to be signed, can't be handled in 15 minute meeting, but requires a three hour stretch in the dealership most of which is sitting around making awkward talk with a salesman while waiting for the business manager to be free.  Throughout my life I have had essentially no positive experiences at an auto dealership. Every single one of them has been frustrating and wasteful. Virtually every other commercial experience has improved in my lifetime but not auto dealers.  Their service model is the worst.

Correction:  Their service model is the second worst.  The worst is the DMV.  AKA, Secretary of State in Michigan or Department of Driver Services in Georgia.  In Georgia you need to show your Birth Certificate, your Social Security Card, two examples of proof of residency (utility bills are good for this).  Furthermore, and this is especially hard on women who have been married, you must show proof of name change.  So the maiden name on your birth certificate must match with the name on your marriage certificate.  What's worse, the marriage certificate must be an official embossed copy.  

Problem:  The SO was married in California where they do not produce embossed copies.  And this is where you will find yourself in either 1984 or Idiocracy depending on your mood.  Situations like this are what two-bit bureaucrats live for.  They now have the power to tell you "no" and the excuse of "we're just following the rules".  What they really mean is "I don't have to care about your problem and there's nothing you can do about it and I'll still get paid." I would bet the DMV is responsible for more MAGA-drain-the-swamp-types than Fox News.

The truth is that they can help you.  They can make exceptions.  They can work to enforce the spirit of the law -- letting people they believe are low risk to be scamming them get licenses even if the documents don't perfectly conform -- rather than the letter.  They just don't want to. It is a true power rush for a basic bureaucrat to stiff arm you free of consequence. 

Luckily I have experience with this.  I knew from my days dealing with the Secretary of State that it all depends on who you happen to get at the window.  I also know that in small towns, rural areas, people are more inclined to be helpful and understanding since most of the folks who come in are their neighbors.  Our first attempt in Savannah produced a defiant stiff arm.  The situation was resolved by driving an hour away to an office in a much smaller, more accommodating place where we were in and out in about 15 minutes, further confirming the arbitrary nature of the whole mess.

Adding insult to injury is that there is a new initiative that most States are adhering to called Real ID.  When you have a Real ID license you have verified that you are who you are.  If you have a Real ID license in one state and want to get one in another state, you should just have to verify residency.  Your identity has already been verified.  The SO's Texas license has Real ID, but we were still put through the identity wringer.  Arrgh! 

Not that I was planning on it, but the whole escapade made me resolve that I won't ever be moving to Georgia. 

Where I will one day be moving is Florida.  And that was the second part of the trip.

Two stops in Florida, the first Sarasota.  

I have lost track of the fastest growing retirement communities in the country but I know the last time I checked The Villages, was on top and probably still is.  Second is Lakewood Ranch, a community -- or rather, a series of communities inland from the Sarasota/Bradenton area, just east of I-75.  Somewhat famously, Mick Jagger bought a home there for his in-laws.  This was Target One for this trip.  

Lakewood Ranch consists of 50 square miles with a dozen or so individual developments which have slightly varying features and costs.  Now bear in mind this was June, off season, and we are a good distance away from the beaches and the tourist areas, and it was still very active.  There are areas of commerce, including a nicely designed "Main Street" area which I assume is the center of any lifestyle activity.  There was a top notch farmers market going on the day we visited.

First, an aside about retirement communities.  These are obviously a big deal in Florida, and presumably,  a growing deal in most other places considering the aging population.  Some, but not all of these communities are called "55+", which does not mean you have to be over 55 to live there.  It means:

55+ communities do not allow anyone under the age of 18 to live there full-time, although visitors are allowed for specific numbers of weeks per year, as stated in the homeowner association documents.

People who are not yet 55 or older are also allowed to live in these communities provided their spouse is at least 55. Many communities require at least 80% of the housing to be occupied by 55+ owners or renters, with up to 20% only required to be 50 years or older.

When we visited the Villages last year I was surprised at the number of young people I saw.  In our new world where rent is so high, adult children continue to live at home and I sense that there are many such situations in these communities.

Aside to the aside: Folks look on this phenomenon as a kind of failure, but multi-generational homes have been the rule, not the exception, for the bulk of history.

Only a couple of the developments in Lakewood Ranch are 55+, although you wouldn't know it since the bulk of the people who can afford these homes have had to have long, productive lives to get there.

Developments like these, where for the most part you are buying new construction, are centered around a builder. Pulte, Toll Brothers, Lennar are some big names. These builders supply buyers with alternative floor plans of varying specs -- square feet, number of bedrooms/baths, garage space, etc. -- and varying ability to customize.  The houses themselves typically range from 500k for the most basic all the way up into the millions.  On top of that you have to pay what is called a lot premium -- an extra amount that depends on the desirability of the location, usually starting about 50k but into the 200k range for water view and golf course abutting lots.  So, yeah, this is a big purchase and generally reserved for what one hopes will be their final home.

Lakewood Ranch has some nice benefits.  First it is in the Sarasota/Bradenton area that I know well.  There are limitless things to do, there are beaches within an hour, there is a big-city level commerce and services available, including high-end medical facilities.  There is an airport in town used by most of the big airlines.  All in all, it would be a solid place to settle in and hope you don't get swamped in new developments.

There are, naturally, some downsides.  First, while there are nice clubhouses with pools and fitness facilities, I'm not sure they will be up to snuff for me.  I have pretty high-end requirements in those areas.  That means I may be looking into the surrounding area.  Second, I have seen how busy and chaotic it can be when the snowbirds flock in.  That could get frustrating. But otherwise this would be a cool spot.  Well, not in summer, but I have already resigned myself to finding ways to spend high summer back in Michigan.

Target number two was a couple hours north in Crystal River.  Crystal River is famous for being the place you can swim with the Manatees.  A thing I have done twice and highly recommend.  It's not swimming in a tank or pool with captive manatees.  You are swimming with them in their habit.  

All areas of the Florida coast have names.  Here is a map of them. Crystal River is part of The Nature Coast.  If any area of the Florida Coast can be considered to be undeveloped it's the Nature Coast.  How it was spared is interwoven with the story of I-75. Back in the 80's I-75 was being extended all the way through Florida (it starts in Northern Michigan).  Eventually it reached almost to Marco Island before hanging a sharp left and connecting with the Atlantic Coast via Alligator Alley.  This did two things.  It alleviated traffic on the former north-south corridor road, US-41 and also encouraged commercial development another 5-10 miles further inland.  Another interesting effect of this was to essentially freeze US-41 in the 80s.  With the bulk of the pass through traffic taking I-75 there has been very little new development on US-41.  All the old buildings and strip malls and motels still exist there in all their tedious-road-trip-in-the-family-station-wagon glory.  I-75 was indeed a blessing.  I am one who had to make this road trip on stop-and-go US-41 so I know that to be true.  But I digress.

Anyway, as I-75 grew southward it passed through Gainesville and at some point it was going to have to veer towards the gulf coast to relieve US-41 as planned, but drawing it away towards the center of the state was the 900 lb. gorilla of Orlando and The Mouse.  This made Crystal River an afterthought for snowbirds barreling down from the northern kingdoms.

The vibe in Crystal River and the surrounding areas is palably different from Sarasota/Bradenton.  To me it's more normal.  The traffic is not bad.  It's filled with two-lane roads with long distances between stop lights.  And there is only one really nice retirement community, but it's really really nice.  Although it's a smaller community, the homes are just as nice as Lakewood Ranch and a bit more customizable. It's also what is called a lifestyle community, like the Villages, where the recreation and social world revolves around the on site amenities.  There are restaurants and health clubs and, of course, golf courses and pickleball courts, all for residents only.  Even I was impressed with the gym, and that's not easy.

Crystal River is not a backwater. But the retail atmosphere is Publix/CVS/Target level.  And the good restaurants are few.  The growing (and, I think, affluent) city of Ocala is about a half hour away where choices are better.  Tampa is probably an hour and a half.  Orlando is probably two.  So there are citified choices if you really need them.

One concern with being away from the city centers is medical services, a thing that is likely to grow in importance as time passes.

At one point in the visit the SO turned to me and said, this is kind of like Dexter.  A major plus as I love my current home of Dexter, MI.  There is still time, but at least for now, I would say Crystal River is the frontrunner.

I have probably been talking on this site for at least 10 years about retirement planning.  It's getting closer and more real with each passing month.  Soon a decision will have to be made.  And money spent.  Lots of money.

[Rant] RIP Portland

A piece of wisdom lost on extremists of all stripes is that Control and Anarchy are yin and yang.  Both opposing and complimentary.  People are generally predisposed to one or the other, but when a society goes too far in either direction, pain and destruction follow.

My armchair guess is that historically, things have fallen out of balance in the Control direction more often than not but, occasionally, societies, like individuals, go too hard toward Anarchy.  They do things that only make sense in a  fantasy world where humans are perfectly virtuous and where things happen in the way they should because we really want them to and no authority or hierarchy is needed.  Most, but not all, individuals get beyond this tendency by the time they reach adulthood.  They learn to face the world as it is and see the deep flaws in humanity that need to be limited. As to why societies and institutions make the same mistake, I don't know.  I suppose if enough individuals in the society are so inclined to fantasy perhaps a tipping point is reached and the whole thing goes south.

For some reason unfathomable to me, in the wake of Covid, folks took the opportunity to riot over racism.  Any psychological explanation is going to sound absurd.  Was it that in the face of all the dire restrictions of Covid -- most of which have since proved to be useless or outright manipulations -- people were desperate for anything to dominate their lives instead of the pandemic and so decided they would protest for woke-ish causes for which they would get massive support from the establishment? Or was it a welling of nihilism in the face of a natural disaster that we could not really control; a huge collective cry of "What's the point of anything?"  Who knows, but having yielded to the anarchist impulse, the pain is now coming.

Now all that lost wisdom has to be re-learned. And the epicenter of that learning is Portland, Oregon.  Portland went as far over to anarchy as they could, thanks to a particularly weak set of leaders who seemed delighted to just give in to anyone who was acting righteous enough.  A section of the city was simply left to its own devices, no policing, no laws.  But even beyond that area, policing was cut way back, laws left unenforced, crime was relatively free of consequence.  As any adult could have predicted, it turned into a pocket of brutal dystopia. Crime rates soared. People openly shoplifted. Folks put signs on their homes and businesses begging rioters not to burn and wreck them (they did anyway). For the anarchy cheerleaders it was a thrilling act of self-gratification.  But now the bill has come due.  At the time I wrote, "Can you imagine anyone looking to start a business in Portland?" because I am an adult.  

Couple of years later, not only is no one starting a business there, existing businesses are fleeing, nearly all of them citing customer and employee safety as a major concern along with shoplifting losses.  These are not just Mom-and-Pops who can't handle the pressure.  Walmart, Whole Foods, REI, Nike, Cracker Barrel have all exited Portland.  The Apple Store has been described as a fortress.

This is all new to the people of Portland.  They have experienced strong growth for all the years of their existence until now. Suddenly they are losing businesses and population is dropping for the first time in their history.  They are behaving like this is just a blip and they will recover; in time, Portlandia will return.

It won't. Portland is deluding itself.  I say this as someone who has watched his birthplace of Detroit play this game for his entire life. Detroit has been "recovering" for 70 years. What will happen in the short term is the weak leaders of Portland will start to make some minor changes, more out of shock at how bad things are than from any wisdom.  These will do no good.  In time, these weaklings will leave office declaring victory which will fool nobody but themselves.  A new regime will come in and even though they may actually want to make changes that would help, plunging tax revenues and dysfunctional governmental bureaucracy will stop them.  The spiral will continue.  The bottom is decades into the future.  And there is no guarantee of a turnaround even at the bottom. It may, just like Detroit, lay on the ground forever with a core population continuing to insist, "It's not that bad."

Here's my prediction for Portland 50 years hence, long after I'm gone: Population and business losses will continue to slowly erode the city.  Public services and safety will erode with it.  Lots of grand initiatives will be announced and celebrated, but they will never pay off in any meaningful way. The best they will be able to do is keep a few blocks of a core downtown area viable as a lifeline, centered around their single pro sports team and maybe a museum or two or an open market and a handful of restaurants.  In time, and after grueling debate, they will permit casino gambling in a desperate grab for cash.  Outside of those few blocks, the rest of the city will continue to shrink and repel civilization.  And the whole way cheerleaders will be insisting "It's not that bad" or "It's a great recovery story".

I don't know how to fix it.  I've never seen a city recover from self-destruction.  The leaders of Portland should be deeply, deeply ashamed at the destruction and pain they've permitted and even encouraged.  They won't be, though.  They will continue to delude themselves that it was circumstances out of their control that brought about this degradation, if they even get far enough to admit the degradation they see before their eyes.

A rebalancing toward Control might work but that would require people to outright admit they were wrong.  A fate few people, and certainly no politician, can accept.  The only thing we can hope is that the wisdom has been relearned elsewhere from Portland's example.

[Rant] Something Less Than Human

Someone who was my age now (62.5) at the time of my birth was born into a world where Queen Victoria was still ruling the Empire and a person could pretty much travel and live anywhere without justification or the approval of authority and, for the most part, pretend to be whomever he chose.  (See The World of Yesterday.)   Interestingly, that time would also see the first use of the word "computer" and the first organization dedicated to LGBT rights.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, eh?

To quote the above mentioned The World of Yesterday:

None of these young people believed their parents, the politicians or their teachers. Every state decree was read with distrust. The postwar generation [post-WW1] emancipated itself with a sudden, violent reaction...Anyone or anything not their own age was finished, out-of-date, done for...School councils...were set up, with young people keeping a sharp eye on the teachers and making their own changes to the curriculum, because children wanted to learn only what they liked. Girls had their hair cut in such short bobs that they could not be told from boys; young men shaved off their beards to look more like girls. Homosexuality and lesbianism were very much in fashion, not as a result of a young person's instinctive drives, but in protest against all the old traditional, legal and moral kinds of love.

A lesson I learned far too late in life is the people of the past were no different from us.  None of the motivating ideas of Wokeness that so entrance the youth are new.  They in fact, were born from the very people the movement looks upon as morally backwards and reprehensible.  For balance, none of the ideas of what has been called the New Right or the Dark Enlightenment (or whatever euphemism is being used today) is new.  At least, to their credit, they believe that is a feature, not a bug.  The nature of humanity is the same as it always was.  We delude ourselves that we are different out of hubris.

And yet, the past is a foreign country.  We can read of their habits and manners and be amused or appalled or confused.  To pick on a cliche example, slavery was broadly accepted as normal for most of the world's history.  (No, I'm not just referring to slavery in the Old South, which seems to be the only one anyone thinks of anymore.)  We can't understand how this could be.  How do we reconcile the fact that these humans were exactly like us, yet manifested behaviors we can't fathom?

I can only think that there are certain behavior patterns that are endemically human, perhaps encoded in our DNA or perhaps so foundational to our social beings that you can easily track them through time.  But they can ultimately manifest in behaviors that are almost 180 degrees opposed to each other.  For example, an innate sense of fairness can lead us to conflict whether it is applied to outcomes or opportunities.  An instinct for defiance can lead to embrace or repulsion.  A desire for security can lead us to conform or isolate.

What people mean when they describe a piece of literature as timeless is that the core themes emphasized are those behaviors that survive over time, as opposed to "ripped from the headlines" narratives. 

This is where I start yelling at clouds.  Feel free to bail.

In the current age, drama, in the form of TV and Movies and, to some extent, stage plays, gets created almost on a whim. There are so many productions that it's impossible to keep track.  How many streaming channels are producing original content.  Beyond that content from across the globe is readily available.  As recently as 20 years ago it was possible to have at least a decent enough grip on the market output to know whether something was worth watching or not and feel confident that you were able to keep up on most of the worthwhile releases.

No longer.  The quantity produced is too great now to even begin to survey a large portion of it.  And, as we know, when quantity goes up quality goes down.  The thing is, dramatizing timeless themes is hard.  It takes insight and consideration to even identify them and it takes talent, sweat, and toil to dramatize them.  The talent to do so does not increase anywhere near the rate the quantity of drama increases.  We're now producing so much output that we have reached far outside the talent pool for the needed labor.  

You see it every day. Most streaming services are on a kick now to remake, or reboot, or reimagine -- pick your euphemism -- previously successful works.  Almost all of them fail outright.  The successes are little more than average.  They consist of characters shouting their feelings and intentions at each other so you know what to think; they gender- or race-swap legacy characters and somehow believe that constitutes creativity; they write dialog at a third grade level; they work from formulas that they hope are low risk, but they are just plain low. Honestly, ChatGPT could probably do better.

This is a time where quality drama is so rare that not only is nearly impossible to find, the audience has been so numbed by the content from Disney or Amazon that they don't even realize how truly awful most of it is.  So desensitized to quality are viewers that, were they to watch some truly remarkable they would only see it in terms of what formula it fit.  Show them The Sopranos and they say it was a mob soap opera, instead of seeing it for the tour-de-force portrayal of our human capacity for self-delusion that it is.  

What do you do when you live in such an era? First, convince yourself it can't last forever. Quality never completely disappears, it just gets lost in the shuffle most of the time.  Treasure the good stuff you do find:  Better Call Saul, The Bear.  

Second, resort to the old and timeless.  It's hard to read old books when you've been conditioned (or reconditioned) to Twitter and Instagram, nevermind TikTok.  They are often written in rich, florid sentences that can take a minute to parse. The vocabulary is beyond you and you have to resort to context to understand.  The cultural references of their moment are unrecognizable.  But I have found wonders of similarities to today; I can relate to many of the characters.  Take for instance the common theme of men lost in young adulthood.  In This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920) we follow privileged young people as they hedonistically make their way through their college years.  Try watching The Graduate (1967) for a take on being adrift in early adulthood.  In The Wrecker (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1896) our lead is a young man who pursued his dream of being an artist against the wishes of his father -- I know many such 20-somethings today. And if you're concerned about the interaction of college an ethnic identity I humbly suggest Apple Pie (David Mazzotta, 1999). 

My pipe dream is that all young people read these and understand their struggles are nothing new. The fears and insecurity that underlie all their false confidence and righteousness are precisely what is expected of them. That thing many of them call depression is just the normal way they are supposed to feel at their age. That it will be a struggle, but they will find a way through it and the world won't end if they compromise or fail.  Basically, that they are OK and can chill out a bit and maybe lay off the Zoloft.

And that maybe everyone will realize that there is nothing special or apocalyptic going on.  That, as always, it is the best of times and the worst of times (another nugget of timeless wisdom from an old book). That they live in a world of endless noise; of tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing (how could Shakespeare have known about our new cycle -- yes I know that's not exactly what MacBeth meant; work with me).  Then maybe we'd all chill out.  Maybe we could give more thought to our humanity instead of dwelling on our neurosis.  Maybe we could have real tolerance of each other instead of divisive social engineering.  Maybe we could see our own absurdities and laugh at them.  

Maybe there would be something worth watching on TV.

[Rant, Travel] Hertz Hurts

Long time readers know that I have a hate/hate relationship with car rental agencies.  The glaring exception to this is National Car Rental and if I have one piece of advice every traveler should follow it is: Join National's Emerald Club and never rent a car from anyone but National unless it's a dire emergency.  If National has no cars available, consider flying into another airport when cars are available or rescheduling your trip until they do. (That last sentence is only partially tongue in cheek.)

The corporate culture at every other car rental company is aggressively adversarial.  Whether it's misleading you into buying add-ons or scaring you into insurance you don't need or charging you for damage you didn't cause -- they are looking for ways to squeeze you and slap you.  They do this not because it is especially profitable, but because their culture teaches them that their customers are either easy marks or dishonest cheats.  Despite my jaded view, I have to admit, the recent actions from Hertz surprised even me in its outright contemptuousness. 

Hertz's (reasonable) policy is that cars that are not returned in the time frame expected get reported to the police as stolen.  Now I am sure even Hertz doesn't report a car stolen as soon as it's late.  There is probably a grace period, during which they expect you to contact them and/or they try to contact you, but after that, yeah, the car is effectively stolen.

Well it seems our friends at Hertz had what they are calling a "computer glitch" that ended up having them report legitimately rented cars as stolen.  Imagine tooling around in your rented Hertz -- having been scammed into an upgrade and liability insurance despite already being covered by your American Express -- when you get pulled over, arrested, and even jailed for auto theft. It was not just one or two cases.  There were three hundred and sixty-four claims against Hertz for this in a class action lawsuit.

Now, I work in technology so I know the kind of bad situations "computer glitches" can get you in.  And I am not someone inclined to decry big corporations needlessly.  They are, in fact, easy targets.  They are risk averse, vulnerable to PR assaults, and easy to demonize because there is never a human face to them.  Still, I can't help but wonder how this "computer glitch" was left in the wild for so long without somebody saying, "Maybe we should do a manual review before we report cars stolen and have our customers thrown in jail until we get the glitch fixed."

The lawsuit itself calls that out (not manually reviewing stolen car reporting) as an act of corporate malfeasance.  And it goes one better, claiming that in some instances, when confronted with a false report, Hertz actually backdated the documentation to make it look like the customer was at fault.  Here is a good summary.  If that is true, it's outright fraud.

Perhaps we will never know the truth since Hertz has settled the cases (or at least "most" of the cases) for $168M.  My advanced math skills tell me that is well in excess of $450k per claim, which suggests they really, really didn't want this to go further.

On the one hand Hertz has been a mess.  They filed Chapter 11 during the pandemic and have settled other class actions brought against them including not paying overtime, false claims of damages, excessive toll fees, and more.  You'd think they were a hair's breadth from folding.  Then it turns out, they just arranged to buy a 100K Tesla fleet for $4.2B.  Da hell?

By the end of April 2020, Hertz was missing lease payments on its fleet. On May 18, Kathryn Marinello stepped down as CEO. Four days later, on May 22, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing $18 billion in debt. Shortly after that, famed activist investor Carl Icahn sold his entire 39% stake in Hertz for a mere 72 cents per share, taking a $2 billion loss.

Then, a funny thing happened. Retail investors started flocking to Hertz stock. Some were driven by a belief that the Hertz brand could eventually sell for enough to return some value to equity holders. Some were driven by pure speculation. Whatever the reason, the result was that Hertz shares soared 1,000% in the span of two weeks, climbing from as low as 59 cents per share up to $5.50.

Covid taketh away and then Covid giveth right back.  Bankruptcy law is a strange thing.  You would think going bankrupt would mean destruction, but it often means the opposite.  You get a clean slate financially and your lenders have to eat it.  The adage "If you owe someone $100 and can't pay you are in trouble, but if you owe someone millions and can't pay, they are in trouble" is very, very true.

Those financial machinations may bring profit.  It's possible they will attract a whole demographic of retail renters with the offer of Teslas instead of Chevy Malibus. But if there is any justice, it will be short lived unless they change their behavior toward their customers.  "I got falsely arrested for auto theft and thrown in jail, but at least I was driving a Tesla," said no one ever.

In contrast, think of the disaster Southwest Airlines just went through.  They, like Hertz, have a lot of fundamental problems but they are generally well-liked by their customers.  Speculation currently is that Southwest will weather the reputational storm.  People are forgiving if they don't think you're malicious.

The moral of the story:  join National Car Rental's Emerald Club.