Last fall I read The Great School Rethink by Frederick Hess, who works with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. He focuses largely on education policy initiatives, many of which might be familiar: school choice, assessments, funding distribution, and curriculum adoption, among others. While I find these topics and the debates around them interesting, my main takeaway from reading this book was broader. It reminded me that a person is not static, and when we talk with someone we have to focus more on the thoughts they’re presenting and not conflate that with our notions of who the person is when taken as a sum of their parts.
Continue reading ““The Great School Rethink” and Assessing Ideas”Vision Pro Part 2: Inside Looking Out
I’ve completed my Apple Vision Pro demo in what felt like record time—seventeen minutes, when everything I’ve heard referenced half an hour—and I can firmly place myself in the camp of people who simultaneously very interested in a Meta Quest 3 right now, and excited about the next several versions of Vision Pro.
Continue reading “Vision Pro Part 2: Inside Looking Out”Vision Pro Part 1: Outside Looking In
Last week, Apple launched Vision Pro. I’ve read and listened to commentary, and watched many reviews and demos since its release. I have a good sense of what it can and can’t do, but that’s hugely different than experiencing it. Here is my current understanding of Vision Pro and what I find most important and interesting without having used it. This Wednesday I’ll be going to an Apple store to demo Vision Pro, and I will follow up with what I’ve learned.
Continue reading “Vision Pro Part 1: Outside Looking In”A Winter Sunset
The world plays tricks on us. Nature can be brutal and unforgiving. It simply is; if you are on the wrong side of it being what it is, so much the worse for you. But look closely: there are moments of pure fairness, perhaps of generosity, that peek through.
Consider the late afternoon on a viciously cold winter day. A biting wind winds its way through the air, its icy tendrils working its way in the gaps of your scarf, slapping at the inch of exposed skin between sleeves and gloves, sweeping across your nose. The air is pure and frozen. Snow deadens the world; it muffles sound that paradoxically travels farther and clearer.
As you walk through the landscape, the snow shuffling and crunching beneath your boots, the world around you lays dormant. A few evergreens continue to defy the slumber surrounding them, while the birds have moved elsewhere, plants are brown, the palette of the world has been deadened and dulled.
Yet some early evenings hold a surprise: the sun begins its plummet to the horizon to begin another moonlit night that stays brighter than one imagines, as the cold reflected light meets a glinting snow cover that palely illuminates the world. Thinking about this black-and-white night, anticipating the warmth of a fire and the cozy companionship of others, you see vivid pinks and purples and reds blazing in the distance. Truffula tree and cotton candy clouds, backlit from a now invisible source, lazily move along in the cold wind; their luminance is entirely ignorant of the world below.
Standing outside in a biting world somehow intensifies the hues. They shine vivid and hopeful through spidery limbs of leafless trees. They attract shivering eyes and halt chattering teeth, and steamy breaths release quiet Wow‘s that reverberate through the chilly air. It is a simple joy of the world that accelerates the spirit through the forthcoming night.
Bar Trivia Format Smackdown
As a wily veteran of two pub trivia locations in San Francisco and an occasional purveyor of other events when traveling, I’d like to compare the three formats I’ve become the most familiar with: Geeks Who Drink, Trivia Mafia, and SpeedQuizzing. Consider this a pub trivia personality quiz.
Continue reading “Bar Trivia Format Smackdown”Joe Mauer Elected to Baseball Hall of Fame
From Anthony Castrovince on MLB.com:
The St. Paul, Minn., kid made good on his 2001 selection as the No. 1 overall Draft pick by his hometown Twins to become a six-time All-Star, five-time Silver Slugger, three-time batting champ and the 2009 AL MVP. He was a member of four division-winning Twins teams.
Though his catching career was cut short by concussions and five seasons as essentially a league-average first baseman complicated his Cooperstown case, Mauer made enough of an impact at his primary position to stand among the greatest to ever don the tools of ignorance. His .306 career batting average is tied for the sixth highest among catchers with at least 3,000 plate appearances, and his .388 on-base percentage is tied for third. He’s the only catcher with three batting titles, and his total of 44.6 bWAR during his 10 years as the Twins’ primary catcher from 2004-13 was by far the best at that position in that timeframe.
Joe Mauer was a huge part of my childhood and, as I am also a left-handed hitter with a tendency to hit to the opposite field, a baseball idol. He’s someone I can always hold up as an ideal of Minnesota: kind, humble, and driven.
I remember sitting in my long-term AirBnB in 2018 after moving to San Diego one September afternoon, watching what would be Joe Mauer’s final game in Minnesota. In his final at-bat he cracked shot to left-center field as he’d done so many times, and hustled out a double. To cap off the game, they introduced him as a catcher in the top of the ninth. He warmed up the pitcher, threw down to second, and caught the first pitch of the inning before being replaced. Despite being at the end of his career, and not having caught in five years, you could see the command he held behind the plate paired with the smoothest mechanics I’ve seen.
I cried then, and every time I see the clip I tear up.
It was only in the span of 2009–2011 when he won MVP and ended up on the cover of MLB: The Show that I realized he wasn’t just our hometown hero, he was nationally recognized. As a kid, it’s hard to understand what bleeds outside your world. But he was never a superstar because he was so reserved. With a few exceptions, his TV presence was for local commercials or focused on the Twins. He rarely spoke out. He led quietly by example for his entire career.
So, it was such a delight to see the people I read and interact with online largely getting behind his Hall of Fame candidacy, pushing for him to get on during his first stint on the ballot. Having that come true means more to him, I’m sure, than anyone Twins fans. But it still means a hell of a lot to us.
Team Spirit
Groups of people can’t be forced to mesh. The intangible qualities of a team that works well together develops naturally through experience with each other and a shared understanding of their goal. It often requires leadership. Once everyone is flowing together, occupying their well-defined roles, the planned injection of a some humor or event to bond over becomes a layer of glue rather than a wedge of forced corporate optimism.
What I’m really saying is that I made a mug last year for my team at work, and I’m finally getting around to sharing it.
My boss is known for his heavy use of cliches in everyday conversation, so we decided to honor that. Because everyone is in on the joke, it works out well.
George Saunders and Writing Better
Two authors have had an outsized impact on my continued desire to hone my writing craft: Kurt Vonnegut and George Saunders. At the end of 2023 I read Lincoln in the Bardo and completed Liberation Day to begin 2024, both by Saunders, so he is front of mind.
Continue reading “George Saunders and Writing Better”