Sometimes, you’re wrong. I was so wrong.

I thought the kitchen and the BNH would be a race to the finish, and then the world had other plans. After a routine pre-natal testing on the Thursday following my last post, the medical team decided that the 👶 needed to to come out and began the induction process. Dominic showed up eighteen hours later, in the wee hours of the morning, kicking and screaming, tracking on the very low end of the weight distribution, but an otherwise healthy and happy baby. Welcome to the world, petit Dom. You were born on Good Friday, during the Ramadan, on the beginning of Passover, and on tax day. Hopefully none of these are omens of how you’re going to turn out.

On the other hand, the contractors had to burn the midnight oil in order to meet even their most conservative deadlines — and even then, they failed. The refinishing of the floors only began on the very last day we had in our temporary AirBnb. Give it another 24 hours to cure and we were looking at a situation where we’d be temporarily with a new born and without a roof over our heads. We ended up negotiating with our host to extend the rental by another day, and then Molly went to spend a couple of nights at her mother’s in Santa Rosa. This created a narrow window of time for me to finish packing our stuff and hire movers to haul it back to our place.

As I’m typing this, we’re moved back and in the process of unpacking. The kitchen is ~done. Everything is set except for two appliances: the dishwasher and the hood. We can live without the latter but caring for a newborn without the former is an interesting challenge, especially since we can’t use the kitchen sink yet: the garbage disposal is “leaky” since the plug to the dishwasher is missing. Other than that, the kitchen looks swell. In spite of the layout being largely the same as our previous kitchen, the storage is organized slightly differently and we’ve spent the last two days trying to make it make sense. Not everything can fit in it and we’re resorting to tossing out some of our things.

I got myself a new, satisfying spice rack.

Dominic himself turns out to be quite a chill kid and easy to debug thus far: he’s either in need of milk, of a clean diaper, of a blanket, or just passing a fart. He’s been on a pretty intensive feeding schedule and his weight is finally tracking up and to the right, which is very nice. As he spends most of his time sleeping soundly, this has created some time for us to catch up on life a bit. I’ve spent some time sorting through my Google Drive, which had been left unorganized since forever. I’ve also been working on pictures from last year, which I should have published soon. I was also online and without distractions when I got a notification that Sony was about to open the queue for purchasing a PS5.

I’d been on the prowl for a console since the launch but never got lucky: in most cases, retailers are trying to tie the purchase to a subscription service, or a bundle that contains extra stuff I didn’t want. On the other hand, the grey market for PS5s has been thriving with scalpers. I’m still baffled that Sony doesn’t have a simple always-on global queue directly fed from the production line. This drop looked legit and as close as possible to what I was after: a direct sale from Sony, for either model of console, with no PSN subscription required. I entered the queue and, just 25 minutes later, I was poorer by $557. Three days later, the package was delivered and I was poorer by another $69, i.e. the price of a Horizon Forbidden West license.

Other memorable things from the last couple of weeks:

1. JFK is car-free: it’s unbelievable that this was ever a controversial proposition. I think we’ll look back on this in 40 years with the same awe as we do the project to build a freeway on the Panhandle: how was this ever up for discussion? It’s great that people are starting to claw some ground back from cars — and that when they can’t nature does it for us. Shame on the supes that tried to map this proposal onto racial and social dividing lines: being a pedestrian or a cyclist is seen as a privilege of the elite, while leasing a gas guzzler is seen as a necessity for the poor? Gimme a break — we need more parks and fewer roads.
2. Macron was reelected president of France, to the surprise of absolutely nobody. Marine Le Pen improved on her result from 2017 by just over 7%, which is exactly the percentage of votes that the other fascist candidate got in the first round. That’s right, France is so messed up right now that it’s got two distinct fascist parties. Macron spent his first term toying with the far right and I see no reason to rejoice over his victory: he’s missed the mark on most of everything he promised to deliver in 2017, and managed to antagonize a large fraction of the people, either against him or against each another.
3. Ukraine continues to valiantly resist against the Russian invasion. More horrid stories of rapes and summary executions and blind bombings are coming out every day. Western democracies continue to do the absolute bare minimum, be it in military or economic terms: supplying arms and increasing sanctions, whatever the hell that means at this time. Rand Paul is on full display as a Russian asset
4. Elon Musk bought Twitter. It’s supposedly in the name of democracy, or free speech or something like that. Though no one can predict what exactly lies ahead, I anticipate three things happening: an exodus of employees, a rise in valuation (Musk is, after all, a master speculator) and a return of the far right trolls and bots on the platform. I’m personally ready for a post-social internet and a return to blogs & RSS.

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Kitchen update: some progress has been made since the last update, but not as much as we were hoping. Our nemesis, the countertop, is, as of Thursday, fabricated, installed, and quietly setting. The range was also delivered on Friday, which means one side of the kitchen is starting to look like an actual kitchen. Some setbacks to report as well: the hood and the dishwasher should be installed by now and neither of them are. But with the main blocker gone, we are 🤞 that significant progress will be made over the next five days. Backsplash, shelves, fixtures and all remaining appliances are scheduled to be done in the coming week.

With a little bit of luck, the floor might be finished and stained by Friday, which means we would be in a position to move back late in the next weekend.

Brand new human update: still cozy and looking healthy. It’s going to be a race to the finish between him and the kitchen. We finally landed on a name and just managed to clip in the car seat, and in the process of doing that realized that car seats are really fucking big. We’re in for a cozy couple of years should we decide to stick with our worthy Prius C.

Our weekends continue to be mostly chill, and we’re staying home more often than not on weekdays. I feel like we’ve been consuming more media over the past couple of weeks than ever before:

• The Worst Person in the World • The narrative structure of the movie made for a nice change of pace compared to the standard thing you get from most american dramas. I came out of it relaxed and a bit nostalgic to see more of the kind of quiet, introspective European productions that seldom make it across the pond.
• Festen (a.k.a The Celebration) • This movie has been a favorite of mine since its release in the mid-90’s. We’d talked for years about watching it together and finally got it done. One of the few Dogme movies ever made, it’s as much about the (tragic) plot than it is about a distabilizing sensory experience.
• Coda • What better metaphor for teenage-hood than living in a world where no one in your family speaks your language? In many ways, this movie reminded me of Juno: a young girl in not-urban-but-not-so-rural America, with a unique personal struggle that she feels she must deal with it on her own. All in all, a gentle coming of age movie that doesn’t go too far into the corny territory, and an respectful foray into the culture and hardships of deaf people. A remarkable performance by Emilia Jones, who learned sign language, singing and a convincing New England accent just for this role.
• Succession • We somehow missed the Succession train when it left the station three years ago and just recently caught up with most of the first season. Great production value overall and a gripping plot.
• School of Chocolate • This has been a personal binge of mine — I love the friendly food competition reality TV genre and this one hits exactly right. Amaury Guichon is a master of his craft and doesn’t hold his punches but also holds himself accountable for the growth of the candidates.
• Captain Fantastic • This was a comfort watch (we’d seen the movie before and loved it), but an especially meaningful one in light of our upcoming brand new human. Though we’re not planning to abandon civilization anytime soon, there’s an alluring aspect to the blend of intellectual and physical lifestyle that is depicted in the film.

The war in Ukraine has been taking ugly turn after ugly turn. Massacres of civilians, children, rapes, summary executions are all reported on a daily basis now — all of which is coming in addition to massive, consistent shelling of the entire country. Ukrainians are putting up a fight, but the reluctance of western democracies to directly involve themselves in this conflict is nothing short of appalling.

In just under 6 weeks, the Russian army has torn up countless lives and places; over 4 million people are on the path to exile. Many politicians are openly pushing Russian talking points and revealing themselves as Putin’s sock puppets — not the last of whom Marine Le Pen, who just clinched second place in the first round of the French presidential election with nearly 25% of the vote.

Stateside, the Republicans are pushing their latest anti-trans moral panic down everyone’s throat. The confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson as a supreme court justice is historic, yet the hearings consisted of one shitty bait after another, with both sides seeking to get only a palatable soundbite to feed to their base. The outcome is good, but what a disgrace this was to witness. Along with the nationwide push for backwards policies on abortion, the right is going back to its basics and showing that, no, it’s still not over the 2014 decision to legalize same-sex marriage.

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Overdue update.

We’re wrapping in on week three in our temporary apartment. It’s nice being in a different neighborhood and having the chance to explore new places (Uma Casa, Bacco, Mr. Digby’s — all of those very yummy places). But I’m fairly homesick. The place we got is a pretty poor AirBnb, the kind that looks like it has all required amenities but is fundamentally pieced together from second-hand furniture and whatever crap the previous occupants left behind. I can guarantee no one has ever lived full time in this place or they would have noticed how bad the couch is. In all seriousness, this is the worst couch I’ve ever sat on.

First of all, it’s broken to bits — there are two massive holes in the underlying upholstery (which our cat is having a blast exploring), the cushions are slouchy (but not in a good-way-slouchy) and riddled with cigarette holes, provide absolutely no padding against the plywood and metal rods which somehow protrude from the base. The backing panel is shaky and cannot be leaned against. I simply can’t fathom that any human graced with reason and functioning nerve endings would ever sit on this in the shop and decide that this couch should prevail over any other. How many more sentences should I write about this couch being terrible? Enough for anyone reading this to understand how terrible of a sitting experience this couch delivers.

On the actual home front, the progress on our kitchen has stalled a bit. A good amount of work has gone into demolishing the old kitchen and getting a few cabinets installed, but the coordination of the various subcontractors has turned into a bit of a disaster. Some of the new cabinets are damaged or missing elements, and ordering replacements will take weeks. The countertop installer is currently the bottleneck for the whole project and they cannot commit to the fabrication until the end of next week, so we’re basically twiddling our thumbs in the meantime. Our preliminary inspection with the city cleared, which is good. We’re going back every now and then to pick up the mail and water the plants and longing to be back home.

Other than that, our weekends have gotten a little bit more chill. We’re through the handful of parenting classes that we had scheduled throughout March and have at least some idea of what lies ahead of us. I wish I could say we’re fully ready for the arrival of Brand New Human, but the precarious housing situation is throwing a wrench in the plans. There’s still a sliver of hope that the apartment will be ready in time for us to move back before the birth but any attempt at planning anything feels vain right now.

We had a baby shower in a picnic area in the park a couple of weeks ago. I came out of it with the same feeling as I did our wedding, a certain weirdness to see people from our various circles coming together at once and intersecting in unexpected ways, and also a feeling of not spending enough time catching up with anyone.

Molly’s begun her maternity leave and we’ve enjoyed some activities which are both more local and less strenuous, such as the pedal-boats on Stow Lake. We just came back from a very pleasant short walk in the Presidio, on Lover’s Lane and Ecology Trail. We did a maternity shoot yesterday, which led us to Clarion Alley and to Fort Point, both of which rank high on the list of staple San Franciscan locations. Hopefully Brand New Human will have the feeling of a relaxing last few weeks before chaos ensues.

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We moved this week. I’m writing this from our new temporary house in Noe Valley, late on a Sunday evening. I will keep this update relatively brief, mostly because I’m tired and also because there isn’t a lot to say about last week. It was a stressful one both at work and at home. At work because we are in the process of launching the project I’ve been working on for the last year or so, and at home because of the project to renovate the kitchen is finally happening.

We took the afternoon off on Wednesday to drive to the East bay, with the goal of placing an order for a countertop and to pick up the floating shelves from a lumberyard. Alas, the coutertop place refused to deliver to the top floor of an SF building, and the lumberyard didn’t have the kind of slab we were looking for. All was fixed by Thursday evening, thanks to our contractor going straight to the coutertop manufacter and finding an installer for it. We also found another lumber reseller that had a slab of solid oak on hand, and also went to Home Depot to order the doors. By that time, we had everything in hand to kick off the project.

We still caught up with a handful of friends over the week-end: we had a game night at our place with P. & M. on Friday evening, quickly dropped by V.’s birthday party on Saturday, and had a brief lunch at the Grove with Y., R. and their partners on Sunday. This was a good amount of social time, which came in addition to checking into the temporary housing and to packing two full rooms of our old apartment and moving the stuff we’ll need for the next six weeks from one to the other. We’re both pretty spent.

The cabinets for the new kitchen were delivered on Friday and our apartment started looking like a tetris battlefield. This was much bigger shipment than I anticipated and that required a good amount of moving stuff around to make it fit in our small space. On Saturday evening, after spending a few hours packing the kitchen, we collapsed on the couch to watch Station Eleven, surrounded by massive boxes.

Thing looked a little more orderly by Sunday afternoon:

The demolition work is starting tomorrow in the morning. The plan as stated is to rebuild the kitchen in its entirety: new cabinets, appliances, hood, sink, faucet, countertop and backsplash. We’re also refinishing the hardwood floors and getting the bedroom doors replaced. If all goes well, this should take about 4 or 5 weeks — we’ve reserved the temporary housing for 6 weeks, out of an abundance of caution.

Funny thing that happens when you have a cat and start moving furniture around: you find out about their addiction habits. All of those corks were stashed behind a bookshelf in the living room.

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This week’s big news for us is that we are temporarily moving out of our apartment for 6 weeks, starting next Monday. We’ve been planning a kitchen renovation project for years —basically since we moved into the apartment— and decided to pull the trigger early in January. Cabinet delivery was originally anticipated to be mid to late April but we got a call from the delivery company last Friday asking to arrange for a time in the next couple of weeks.

Luckily, we’ve been making good progress on this project in the meantime: we got appliances, sink, faucet, backsplash, handles and pulls ready to go. The last bit we need to do this coming week is order the countertop. Exciting times! Apart from the fireplace (which is mostly out of sight in the second bedroom), the kitchen is really the one large feature of this apartment that makes it look dated. I’m very much looking forward to upgrading, in spite of having to spend several weeks living somewhere else (we have a found an AirBnb in Noe Valley).

I’ve been keeping up with my cycling habit over the last few weeks, which I’m pretty happy about. To switch things up a bit, Victoria and I went on one of my favorite gravel ride: Railroad Grade on Mt. Tam. Unfortunately, Victoria took a spill on very the last few meters of the trail going downhill and has been suffering from a sprained finger which is preventing her from climbing with us.

We’ve had a handful of nice dinners and gatherings with friends over the last few weeks. the Omicron wave seems past us and several Bay Area companies are starting to set timelines on an official return to the office. I refuse to qualify the current era as normal, but it feels like the closest it’s been to pre-pandemic times since the March 2020 shutdown.

There doesn’t seem to be good data to actually back up this trend: the day San Francisco ordered the sheltering in place, there was a grand total of 110 reported new cases in the entire state of California. Yesterday, just shy of two years later, that same metric was 6,476 — close to a 60 times factor. Presumably, the March 2020 reports were much lower than reality, but the most recent data points still feel too high to call this even a respite. Long Covid is poorly understood still, and appears to be, in some cases, completely debilitating. Friends of ours who got Covid last month were bed-ridden for 5 days, in spite of being vaccinated and boosted. Mask mandates are being taken away too rapidly in my opinion.

The other massive news for the world this week was the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The reports from the field are brutal, it’s hard to believe entire neighborhoods have been razed when the country was at peace just last week. War crimes against civilians are being committed and streamed almost live on Reddit. That such loss of life and displacement of population can happen in such a short span of time is unfathomable.

I want to believe from the news broadcasts that the ukrainian people are resisting fiercely, but I’m also wary of the PR moves that Zelenskyy seems to be spending his time performing. His grand actions are befitting of our social media era, and give hope to his people and to the rest of the us that a simple man can stand up to one of the most powerful armies in the world. But there’s pragmatically very little this president can do without actual military backing from the West — and that doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon. Shame on us for this.

Whichever way this war goes, it seems Putin is ready to bet his legacy as a russian leader on it. And just like with Trump, it’s incredibly hard to tell apart his actions from his intentions. There’s a missing piece to this puzzle that I can’t comprehend: given the reaction from the ukrainian people, Putin cannot realistically hope to conquer the country short of completely obliterating it — which in turn seems completely pointless. Is cruelty the point or is he blind to the resistance his troops are facing?

Either way, Putin has shattered the fragile balance of peace that Europe has enjoyed since the end of WWII. The fact that we are realistically marching towards some version of a new global war is, well… I’m really not sure how to qualify this possibility.

Fuck.

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It’s been a pretty uneventful last couple of weeks — we’ve been mostly staying home since our weekend in Big Sur, working through a backlog of things that just need to get done and doing some KonMari’ing of the apartment. In spite of being a huge procrastinator, I recognize the inherent satisfaction that comes with burning down a list of things that have piled on over months. Like replacing our flush, which had been defective for weeks: this took less than 30 minutes and now we have a working flush. Sometimes, it’s the small things.

Even though I’m unlikely to actually be on the AIDS/Lifecycle this year, I decided to ramp up my cycling volume by attending the Sunday PosPeds training series. I’ve been on two rides to Tiburon thus far and hoping to be able to keep up with a weekly-ish cadence. The rides and the people have been lovely, I’m happy to see that the pandemic hasn’t made a dent in people’s motivation.

After about a year of sitting on a draft, I’ve finally reworked and published the article about my experience interviewing for a software job back in the second half 2020. It ended up being much too long but I hope it can be a helpful reference for others who go through that process — and if not, it’s a helpful memorialization of what that process was like for me.

On Thursday night, we went to our first Warriors game ever. They played the Knicks and narrowly lost the game — which was an upset. I was afraid the Chase Center would be a bit sterile and soulless but that’s not the case. 5 out of 7, would do again, despite the ticket prices.

A completely different topic which caught my attention over the last couple of weeks: Maus was recently banned in some Tennessee schools, and the state is also where book burnings recently took place. Yes, you read that right: book burnings. I really wonder what people who organize these think of themselves? “Oh, sure, we’re burning books, but you shouldn’t compare us to those other people who burned books in the past—we’re nothing like them. No, you see, this is different because Harry Potter is actually truly worth cremating.”

Fabricating moral panics is a trademark move of conservatives to rally their base, and that’s precisely what they need to do in order to install more people in local governments. Gruber posited that such an action is bound to never meet its goal, because it actually is free publicity for a book that you can purchase today on Amazon.

This stance has a disturbing smell of hubris ("this can’t happen here, this is America") and short-sightedness ("the market will solve this"). Even assuming censorship doesn’t work as intended in practice, why is side-stepping outrage the desirable outcome here? The end goal is not to ban Maus, it’s to dog whistle to other school boards and anyone with a modicum of power that the season is open.

I do appreciate that, back in the 90’s, the Parental Advisory label put on CDs was a decent signal that this was probably good music. But trusting that other mechanisms will naturally correct for censorship policies is lazy, not to speak of the cost to people who can no longer find the books they want in their local library.

Autocrats have, time and again, succeeded at taking away knowledge they deem deviant from their people, including in societies that were previously educated and cultured. Showings of strength and violence work, and the market will happily follow along: all it takes is for the interest of market makers to align with the party responsible for the moral panic.

It shouldn’t be hard for liberals to take a simple moral stance on topics such as censorship and to combat them on such grounds. Book burnings are bad, actually.

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We had planned to be in Colorado this past weekend, with a goal to be in Ouray for the Ice Festival. I’ve never been but Molly has been a regular attendee in the last few years and has been raving about it: the program consists of ice climbing clinics by day and competitions by night, and of talks given by climbing and moutaineering celebrities. Unfortunately, Omicron and the prospect of spending extended time indoors with people coming from all over the country didn’t make for espcially inviting cicumstances.

Instead, we decided to make it a second three-day week-end in a row and headed to Big Sur. In 15 years of living in the Bay Area, I had somehow never stopped by Bixby Bridge. By the time we got there, it looked abolutely glorious under the California winter sun:

And about 36 hours later, it looked like this:

We learned of the fire as we had just finished watching Don’t Look Up, which made for an eerie few minutes as we were transitioning back into the real world. The movie ridicules the postures of people —politicians, journalists, business people and, ultimately, folks from all walks of life— when confronted with a predictible tragedy.

The script is rumored to have been written in 2019 but it’s undoubtedly been reworked in light of the last two years of pandemic. Certain scenes triggered feelings of acute cringe for me because of how recent that scar tissue is (you could argue the wound remains open). The movie lacks subtletly in its delivery, but its depiction of corrupt, incompetent people being trusted with the utmost responsibilty is spot-on. It’s an apt blend of Idiocracy and Deep Impact, heavily influenced by the Trump presidency.

The plot also touches to a recurring argument about global warming: that looming disasters should only be dealt with at the condition that addressing them registers as a positive outcome for the economy. That, in due time, any time now, supply and demand will naturally rule in favor of the good side. And if that’s the case, why even bother building a moral sense that would assist in making policy decisions?

The fire ended up having only moderate impact on us — we were staying in Cambria, far enough south that the smoke didn’t reach us. We’d already driven through the section of Route 1 that was closed down — just a handful of hours ahead of the fire starting. Everything was fine, we just had to avoid looking north.

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We skipped town last weekend as a friend was visiting from London and asked to spend some time in Marin county. We rented a house in Monte Rio, an area which I know well thanks to the Jonathan Pon memorial ride, which I used to do every year pre-pandemic. It’s a lovely region and the couple of hikes we did over the weekend were drop dead gorgeous: we took a stroll by Goat Rock Beach and did a 4.5 mile hike in Pomo Canyon trail the next day.

Also, this photo could totally be an album cover for an indie synth pop duo from 2008, back when people were always cold:

I was planning to ride my bike over that weekend and unfortunately forgot to pack in a pretty crucial item: my front wheel, which was left behind in San Francisco after we loaded the car. This was kinda sad as the weather was clement and Wildflour Bread made a perfect destination from Monte Rio. Either way, I still put myself on morning scone-getting duty. And sticky bun. And fougasse as well. Everything was thoroughly devoured.

I finally made a dent in my reading backlog: I went through the first two volumes of Bolchoï Arena. The graphic novel is somewhat remindful of eXistenZ, as it revisits the age-old theme of the boundary between real and virtual worlds. Volume 3 just came out and I placed an order right after finishing my reading. I also read the Atlantic’s issue on the January 6 attacks, which are presented as a blueprint for a massive upcoming assault from Republicans on US democracy.

At every level, it seems the GOP is lost in its own separate world and untethered from reality: the conspiracy theories are layering over one another, endlessly. But — and this is a pretty major but — the death cultists are purging the party from leaders who don’t support the Big Lie, and also organizing in many state-level election boards where they change the rules of how ballots are certified. An unlikely break from the madness this week was Trump himself calling his fans to get a Covid vaccine booster – a pragmatic move when a large majority of people who die of Covid every day are leaning red. It’s a pandemic is the unvaccinated and the unvaccinated vote donate to Trump.

Two days after asking Americans to honor the legacy of MLK (tweet), Sinema voted against changing the filibuster rules, which would in turn allow passing stronger voting rights at the federal level. The irony was not lost on anyone, not the least of which on MLK himself.

If you watch one thing today, make it MLK on the filibuster in 1963:

“I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting”pic.twitter.com/i59tqKnG6P

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) January 17, 2022

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