Sam's L33t Journal

I went to PyCon in Pittsburgh last weekend, once again traveling on my own dime and time, per the new way of things at Google. At least they comped me one of their sponsor passes for reg.

Cory Doctorow did the opening keynote, on his theory of the current malaise in the tech industry. Which was quite an opening to the conference: We'd like to thank our sponsors and now here's Cory Doctorow to rip them a new one. I'm a big fan of Doctorow, and think he has a lot of insight. I really do think tech companies have gotten themselves to a point in consolidation-friendly and competition-unfriendly political environment where not only are things getting shittier for users and other stakeholders, the companies have also really painted themselves into a corner and are suffering from stagnation (even in an environment where there's some really amazing development in technical capabilities). Doctorow highlights Jay Saurik's phrase about how the DMCA (and similar laws promulgated by treaty agreements and free-trade deals) prohibiting the circumvention of digital locks makes a de facto crime of "Felony Contempt of Business Model". Doctorow's suggestion that countries should retaliate against tariffs with IP liberalization instead of retaliatory tariffs (i.e. making it possible for their entrepreneurs and firms to compete with US big tech instead of just revenge-taxing their own consumers) is certainly an intriguing possibility!

I think the world Doctorow envisions would be so much better for a lot of people, including software engineers specifically. For those at startups, sure, you could actually get your "compete with the big players" start-up funded, for one thing. But also for those at big companies, which could actually compete with their rivals, instead of just carving out separate fiefdoms and taking occasional all-in/all-out-double-time shots at someone else's crown.

I got to spend a lot of time with my colleagues, especially meeting members of the new Python Team and catching up with members of the former one, many of whom seem to have settled into some really cool Python work at Meta (working on Instagram's high-performance CPython fork or the Rust implementation of their Python type-checker). It's so heartening to see people who enjoyed working with you and are happy to see you and would enjoy to work with you again. (Not that I don't get that on my current team, it's just very reduced.) And I ran into Itamar, a colleague back from my ITA days, and Allen Downey, my CS professor from Olin. Spent most of my time at the convention center, but got to take in a bit of local color. Ate some big sandwiches at Primanti's anyways.

I spent Friday morning in conversation with Cory Doctorow at the PSF lounge in the expo hall, wandered the expo floor, caught talks on new Python features that I hadn't read up on before (e.g. template strings, the effort to escape once and for all from the Global Interpreter Lock), heard about people's fascinating projects. All the talks will be posted to their YouTube channel over the next week or two. The Python community really is a pointedly liberal and activist one, too, there's a real insistence on "Python is for everyone". Python really did carve out a unique niche in its balance of usability and "batteries included" power.

After getting back: This week has been pretty busy with a lot of city and school events. This evening was Somerville's Slice of the City pizza-party get-together for our neighborhood. Tomorrow morning, Erica's class is participating in the Argenziano Wax Museum, an event where the third graders portray people from history (this year focusing on figures from the American Revolution). Tomorrow evening is Argenziano Heritage Night, a big cultural festival at the school that Erica looks forward to every year.

This week is the week that the President decided to crash the economy intentionally, and it worked! Trump's new tariff policy seems to be totally bonkers, and predicated on the belief that trade deficits are the real de facto tariffs (he's described the US as "subsidizing" its trading partners before, so that's the other side of the same coin). The fact that the allegedly "reciprocal" tariffs are not reciprocal of other actual tariffs makes it hard to use as negotiating leverage, and the administration seems to believe several mutually-contradictory things about them (e.g. dropping tariffs will be negotiating leverage that will get other countries to make concessions and the tariffs will generate huge amounts of long-term revenue; the tariffs will cause a huge amount of import substitution and expand domestic production and the tariffs won't substantially raise prices).

There seems to be an assumption that trade deficits are the real in-and-of-themselves bad thing, equivalent to giving money away. But of course trade deficits are not giving money away, it's trade: You get goods and services in return! If there's one inclination of Trump's so deep that it seems like ideological consistency, it's that he's deeply skeptical of the idea of anything being positive-sum. He also seems to think have a Peronist or Maoist view that the country would be better off producing everything itself, and furthermore that domestic production will rise up automatically if imports are crushed. Crashing the economy will in fact reduce imports, but it could be short-term pain now for long-term pain later.

Meanwhile, people whose perception of economic reality seems to have become truly deranged under the Biden administration are jubilant. Crashing the economy is just revealing the hidden truth that the economy has been bad all along. That elation will last until... well, we'll see.

What else, let's talk something more local, more pastoral. Spring weather has finally arrived. It's nice to see all the birds singing in the neighborhood again. We've seen a woodpecker working insects out of some of the nearby trees, a variety of eagles. There have been some owls sighted nearby, I haven't seen one but I think I've heard one a few times.

Erica's friend George's grandpa visited her class a few weeks back. Meant to write about that but didn't. He's currently the poet laureate of the town of Arlington. The class had a good time reading some poetry and writing poems together. Meant to mention that earlier, but missed it.

I read The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine to Erica, and to continue the theme (sort of), we're now reading Princess Academy by Shannon Hale. Both recommendations/gifts from my sister.

After many years of playing the game really slowly, I advanced to the final level of the usual progression in Ingress. Leaving nothing to do but start again. It has been interesting to revisit the progression through the first few levels with the game's latest mechanics. Also, it plays the spooky chimes in the background when you start again.

I just finished reading Matt Yglesias's One Billion Americans. Very good book, but a bit depressing in the current political context. American politics around immigration have long since been a messed-up bundle of incoherent compromises. And the state of it now is beyond bad. Seems the Republicans want us to enjoy a shrinking population as soon as possible, and squander one of America's greatest national strengths. Will there ever be a billion Americans, or an America with national infrastructure far better than it is currently? Seems very uncertain.

It's hard to feel like I'm ever going to rest and recover. Julie was pretty busy this week. The weekend was a little better.

Saturday, I got out to play a bit of Ingress in beautiful weather, wrapping up an in-game event celebrating 12 years since the game was released. I still really like the game's ability to give me random reasons to visit places I wouldn't otherwise. This time, I ended up at Bell Rock Memorial Park in Malden.

Today, I went to the art museum in the morning and wandered the galleries with Julie while Erica had her art lesson. In the afternoon I took Erica climbing and cooked dinner.

I just finished reading Erica The Boxcar Children, which was enjoyable, but also one of the most edges-sanded-off things I've ever read.

Erica's wanted to play Splendor a bunch this week, and she's getting quite good at the game, but is frustrated that she can't win consistently. (Played six games this week, and she managed to win one, but most of the others were quite close, including a tied-at-15 game where I won by having one fewer development cards, basically the closest score possible short of an actual tie.)

I've been enjoying the new Magic set, Foundations, a core set of sorts that will be in Standard (the "just recent sets" variant of the game) for an extended time. It seems like the game will be changing quite a bit in the coming year, and not just for that reason. More about that later maybe if I get to writing about it.

Continues to be busy, but Julie's taking Erica today (after Erica swim lesson, they're going to watch some of the Head of the Charles Regatta and check out an acquaintance's art exhibit) so I have a few quiet moments to do laundry and write.

Last weekend was a long weekend. Saturday, Andrew and Min got married, the ceremony was at the Science Museum out back on the Charles River Promenade, and they got beautiful fall weather, too. On Saturday, we went to visit Xave, Sarah, and baby Adair (who's now mobile and rather communicative, though not talking and walking quite yet), was great to see them. Erica was really excited to get the chance to meet Adair for the first time.

On Monday, saw an early-afternoon showing of the Pharell Williams documentary Piece by Piece with the family. The movie's animated-in-Lego style brings a lot of creative verve and visual metaphor to what would otherwise be a rather straightforward interviews-and-archival-footage structure. Was really fun and interesting, Erica enjoyed it, too. Afterwards, I took Erica to the aquarium and we had a snack at Lakon Paris and spicy noodles at Yume Ga Arukara in the Seaport.

The short week went by real fast. Lots of work meetings and work social stuff with the new person a few levels up from my team.

I finished S a few weeks ago, it was interesting but it's not like there's some neat conclusion that brings it all together in a very satisfying way. I thought I'd enjoy deep-diving video essays about the content of the book after finishing it, but most of what I found was just people arguing about the best way to read it and discussing whether that worked well for them or not. So I guess tentatively recommended if you really like Lost or ergodic literature in general, and I definitely did appreciate the book for being an interesting example of the unusual sort of thing it is.

I also finished Scavengers Reign. It's masterful, recommended if you like animation or science fiction.

I've been so long without writing and don't know where to begin.

The last few weeks have been day-camp weeks for Erica, with two weeks of arts camp at Parts and Crafts on either side of one week of climbing camp at Boston Bouldering. Erica had a lot of fun with both.

Last weekend, I took Erica to Baltimore for a weekend visiting my sister and meeting up with my parents. Now she's off with my parents at Cascade of Music & Dance, then back to Cleveland for more grandparent time. I'll go there to pick her up after.

Baltimore trip was a ton of fun. Erica really loves spending time with her cousin Simon. We went to Chesapeake and Allegheny Live Steamers at Leakin Park (an adorable little 1/8-scale model rail that the kids can ride), spent some time at the pool, and took the water taxi shuttle across the harbor.

I flew Southwest to Baltimore, which was perfectly on time on the way there (despite warnings of bad weather) and then an hour delayed on the way back. Still was pretty nice. I'm always struck by Southwest's odd efficiencies. For example, their snack choice was these onion-and-monkfruit pretzels, which is a distinctly less middle-of-the-road choice than I'd expect for a one-option snack (compare, for example, with Delta's Biscoff cookies). Southwest does kind of have a bit of a "you'll do things our weird way and like it" attitude.

I enjoyed watching some of the Olympics coverage with Erica over the past weeks. The Tahiti surfing was especially spectacular.

I've also been enjoying the new Magic: the Gathering set, Bloomborrow. Set in a world of critters, it's a bit Magic meets Redwall (presumably also Whitewall, Bluewall, Blackwall, and Greenwall). The delayed rotation of the most-recent-sets Standard format has freshened the experience up a bit, though I still feel like the wider window on Standard makes it less fresh than it could be.

Julie's been extremely busy with newcorp stuff, but seems like something is getting off the ground.

I finished reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow on the trip. Thought it was pretty good, though I felt it had a bit of a period-piece-syndrome in the early parts (i.e. like it was trying to crowbar-in 80s references a bit too hard for realism). But I really liked the surrealism of some of the later bits. Overall a good novel, an interesting story.

Recently, I read McKay Coppins's biography, Romney: A Reckoning, which was pretty interesting.

Has any other US politician ever won high-profile sate-wide elections in states with electorates as different as Massachusetts and Utah? You might say Massachusetts (at least the Governorship) is a special case. And possibly say the same for Utah. But still.

I'm reminded of political compass grid memes that put Romney in all four quadrants. And of some Twitter wag (I think, I couldn't find the exact reference for credit and quote) saying (re Romney's guilt-stricken reaction to the reaction to his 47% gaffe as described in this book) that it was funny that god had cursed a single solitary Republican with some amount of self-awareness and that it was, in particular, Mitt Romney. Of gaffes that amounted to "saying his administration would put effort into DEI" and "having a sense of geopolitics that was in fact totally right".

When the topic of this year's primary odds have come up, I've like to make (perhaps exaggeratedly) the point that the odds seem to be underestimating Mitt Romney. Not that Romney would be the nominee (he won't) even if Trump is not (he will be). Just that things would have to be so crazy if the Party of Trump doesn't nominate the guy himself that ending up with some also-ran would just seem to normal, and they'd have to do something outlandish like nominate... the immediately previous nominee from their party.

When I went to visit Fort Warren a while back, a historical reenactor led a tour portraying the former Confederate prisoner Charles McGill, based on the letters he wrote from the prison. Towards the end, he had a line about his fervent wish "to see the destruction of the Republican Party". Which of course got a laugh. I'm sure if you were to go back in time and tell him how the Confederates ultimately got their revenge on the Republican party, well, he might be a little surprised about some of the details but if you told him it was a matter of weird coalition politics, I'm sure that bit would be predictably similar.

Reading Coppins's book did make me wonder what the nation's politics would be like if the Confederates never got their revenge. If the Republican party didn't stop being a place for the sort of Republicans like George Romney and his son.

The "reckoning" in the book refers to Romney's personal reckoning with his own role in facilitating / failing to thwart the rise of the Party of Trump. The transition that brought him in pretty short order from being the Presidential nominee to (pretty much entirely to his own political detriment) voting (twice!) that a President of his own party should be convicted and barred from office for their malfeasance. And yet, as Romney announced his impending retirement, he still couldn't resist the call of at least clinging to the false equivalencies of against-both-sides contrarianism.

One way or another, it's the end of an era. As Romney points out, his generation will not live forever. At some point, the reckoning will have to be done by someone else.

Writing this from the flight back. San Diego trip was pretty great, despite some chaos. Really enjoyed visits to museums and the zoo and the aquarium down at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute and some beautiful scenic spots. Generally lovely weather. The San Diego Zoo is pretty amazing, though that trip was with most of the kids (less baby) and at least five of six had some sort of emotional crisis at some point.

Sean and family got back into town mid-week for a late gift exchange. Unfortunately they fell ill with COVID the following evening, limiting the time visiting the people we'd come to San Diego specifically to visit. So it goes. They didn't get too sick and are recovering all right.

Anyways, I really enjoyed spending time with all of the nieces and nephews and meeting the new baby cousin, Nico. Owen and Mila have grown up so much, and the twins (who just turned four on this trip) have grown a lot and become so much more engaged and opinionated. They have a shared interest in "Paw Patol" and their playing and singing with their new toys was pretty cute.

I did get in a bit of reading and relaxing. Read "How Infrastructure Works", a new book by one of my Olin profs. And watched the anime adaptation of "Pluto" on Netflix, which was really good.

Sandy Island was good. Despite some ups and downs in the weather and some packing mishaps (forgot my rain boots, Erica's didn't fit; Erica's socks were forgotten, though the few random pairs squirreled away in random bags got us through) the week was pretty good.


Got in some reading at camp:

Along the Saltwise Sea by "A. Deborah Baker" - Sequel to the YA book-within-a-book from Seanan McGuire's Middlegame. Was fun. Apparently there's a third book in the series now? I really need to read the sequel to Middlegame, and maybe reread the original.

Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow - Thriller relating the final caper of a freelance forensic accountant, first book in a series written in reverse chronological order, set in our cyberpunk present.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers - My favorite book of the vacation by far. It's a quiet, small, science fiction novel with an unusual and really deep setting. It's a fun, light-hearted, contemplative book.

The Private Provision of Public Transport by Jonathan Richmond - An academic book by a late family friend. It's a set of case studies (organized by city), not popular nonfiction, so it's rather dry. The first few chapters are mostly about efforts to privatize regional blocks of bus transportation in various cities and the political conflict about that (plus Las Vegas, which always only had contract bus operators), the political conflicts described were on pretty familiar lines. The later chapters about New York and Miami focus more on the relations/conflicts between public transit and the regulation of jitney services (licensed or illegal, often serving and originating from immigrant communities) were more interesting.

after the quake by Haruki Murakami - An anthology, this collection of short stories are connected by theme and vague setting but not otherwise tightly tied together. Like much Murakami stuff, it's hard to describe. You'd like it if you liked stuff like After Dark, probably. (Trivia: The story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" here is (somewhat obviously, if you're familiar with both) one of the influences for Makoto Shinkai's Suzume.)

Terciel and Elinor by Garth Nix - A prequel to Sabriel. If you like the rest of the series, you will probably like this book.


Reading aside, enjoyed spending time with Melissa and Simon and Elliott (who made it for the first few days this time) and my parents. Erica had a great time.

After we got home, it was time for laundry and packing for Erica's next trip. Went climbing with Erica Sunday morning, had dinner with Julie's parents Sunday afternoon, and Erica's off for her trip with them and her cousin Emilia this morning. Erica's first trip away from parents (she's had some overnights before, but that's different). Seems to be going well so far but, well, it's a big adventure. They're headed up to Canada this week, to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

Today is my birthday. Last prime number before I'm middle aged (by my standards, anyways, it's just neater to divide things by two decade increments).

This week has been pretty crazy.

Halloween was on Monday, so there was lots of Halloween stuff all weekend. Julie took Erica to a Day of the Dead event at the Peabody Museum on Saturday. Somerville's last street festival of the year was on Sunday, and we went to a Halloween event at the Waterworks Museum near Chestnut Hill Reservoir Sunday morning.

This week at work I've been busy dealing with an important production issue. Unfortunately one that I caused. Trying to deal with technical debt is perilous in that you're extremely likely to get last-minute bit by the pitfalls you're trying to eliminate. So I've been very focused. It is, as always, a good opportunity to learn.

I've also been focused on the home side of things. Julie had a conference in Toronto on Wednesday. Was going to be a day-trip, but the outbound morning flight was cancelled, so she left early, on Thursday evening. Then the return flight was canceled, so she couldn't get home until late tonight.

I still managed to keep up with chores and cooking and fun with Erica. Mostly we had dinners at home, but we had dinner out at Saus tonight (vegetarian fast-food and fries), and Erica was awed by the Impossible nuggets. We're watching a bit of "Is It Cake?" on Netflix, it's fun.

Character Parade at Erica's school is tomorrow, she's dressing up as Chester the cat from Bunnicula.

There's other stuff I want to write about and I keep not making time to write.