Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Eyes up, buttercup

As I walk the not so mean streets of Guangzhou back home in China, I noticed many a building - public and private - being guarded by security. Not sure why that is actually needed because due to the massive video surveillance apparatus in China, nobody is stupid enough to commit physical crimes. But hey, who am I to get in the way of job creation, even if said jobs are kind of meaningless.

What does look wrong is that most of these security guards are staring at their phones! A clear indication that their jobs are of zero consequence. Any worthy criminal would easily pass on by without them noticing.

If I were leadership walking by I would immediately take these building security guards to task. Even if the whole charade is just for show, you still got to make it look convincing. The person responsible for safeguarding an area should absolutely be barred from doing anything but have constant awareness of their surroundings. You’d better know immediately if so much as bird lands on a second story window sill. Perhaps more importantly: you’re not getting paid to watch Douyin videos.

Imagine if the guards at Buckingham Palace - surely purely for ceremony, were staring at the phones, instead of standing at absolute attention. Right to the Australian penal colony, right away.

I would say the same for hired security at American malls. I’ve seen too many guards at our local Target store busy with their phones, rather than paying attention. This is not and should not be acceptable in any country on this planet.

Glued to the phone

One evening in Guangzhou, China we were having dinner at a local restaurant. We were soon joined at the table adjacent by a young couple. Instead of making conversation with each other, both were staring into their phones during the entire meal, each watching their own preferred programing. I guess dinner isn’t the best time to share details of your day?

As much as I assail our general addiction to smartphones, I am far from a luddite. There’s a time and place to enjoy the wonders of Internet videos. Dinner with your significant other shouldn’t be such an occasion? Maybe it’s cultural - here in the States, the person busy with their smartphones during a shared meal is absolutely the asshole.

Or perhaps I’m merely naive to think that conversation comes easily in a long relationship. Maybe when you’ve been with a person for an extended period, you kind of hang out by not really talking to each other. Enjoying each other’s company is just a matter of being in the same room.

That makes more sense. Thanks to urban density we can only dream of, big cities in China have plenty of local mom and pop restaurants. Sprinkle on some capitalism magic, and that means it’s not overly more expensive to eat out than to cook at home. The phone-occupied couple that sat next to us is practically eating dinner at home - the restaurant is not at all an occasion. Put it in this perspective, I can see the lack of conversation.

If it were me, though, I’d rather have the chat. The Internet videos will still be there when we get home.

Pay attention!

Due to the retail theft situation that’s been going on in the Bay Area for far too long (if you ask me), some stores around here have hired their own private security guards. However, every time I see one of these guys, they are… staring at their phone. What in the world? Aren’t you paid (pretty well, I would assume) to be vigilantly aware of the surroundings? To notice and anticipate signs of trouble before they boil over into something expensive?

To paraphrase the great Don Corleone, how a man makes a living doesn’t concern me, so long as his interest doesn’t conflict with mine. Who wouldn’t want to get paid to stare at their smartphone all day? These token store security guards are like the living equivalent of a scarecrow: looks menacing, but in reality can’t and doesn’t really do anything. Surely the enterprising criminal isn’t as dumb as a crow.

I am unfortunately a naturally sweaty person. Put me in a sauna and I am drenched within minutes. I am capable of sweating from head down to the face simply by walking to work. I wish it wasn’t so, though word on the street is botox injections can curb excessive sweating. It’s not just for immobilizing your facial musculature!

In lieu of injecting a foreign substance into my scalp, one of then best purchases I’ve made this year is this $20 portable handheld, battery-powered, fan. Anytime a bout of sweatiness comes on, out comes the little unit to cool me down instantly. I was actually inspired by Kpop singers. After their stage performances they would use these handheld fans to cool down. Not sure why it took me so long to follow suit.

The device is so wonderful that I bought two: one for the home, and one for work.

Do you even know how?

The best piece of furniture one can have in the home is a chaise longue. There’s nothing better after a long day of work than to plop down on the long sofa and chill. Even in this tiny studio apartment of mine, I made sure to accommodate one. In fact, it’s the only piece of chair furniture in the room. A chaise longue is fantastic for Saturday afternoon naps.

At work we have for checkout some relatively old DSLR cameras (like a Canon 5D Mark III). During graduation time the cameras get checked out quite often, which is rather confounding. The modern smartphone camera is so good - why bother with something so clunky and cumbersome?

Under capable hands, old DSLR cameras can still take superior pictures to the top smartphones. But I seriously doubt the casual users checking out the DSLRs from us have any understanding of the exposure triangle. Leaving the camera in full auto while taking pictures at a live graduation is a recipe for blurred bodies and missed smiles. (Pro tip: when capturing people, a fast shutter speed of at least 1/250 of a second is recommended.)

The latest iPhone would have captured dozens of frames’ worth of information before the shutter is even pressed. The output is going to be sharp no matter what, automatically. For the layperson, the smartphone is the superior tool.

We can talk about perhaps smartphone photographic capabilities have gotten too good. The pictures are too crunchy, too sharp, too perfect. Highlights are never blown, and shadows always recovered. I think the inherent limitations of actual cameras provide a vastly more satisfying outcome. The photographs out of my FujiFilm X-T5 can convey emotion, something largely absent from my iPhone captures.

Judging by how absurdly expensive old point-and-shoot cameras have gotten on the used market, and the fact apps are available on smartphones that take away all their computational trickery - I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Hit button, get reward

You would be mistaken to think that addiction to short-form videos like TikTok or Instagram Reels is an American phenomenon. I get it: it's easy to paint that stereotype upon us. A nation so addicted to food (we are fat) would then easily be inclined towards addiction to TikTok. Fill every void in your day with an endless scroll, with quick dopamine hits one after another. Congratulations, we've officially solved the problem of boredom! So long as you have the money for a smartphone (public libraries offer free Internet), you'll never have to deal with the demons in your mind ever again.

Well, it's not just Americans with this zombie dopamine drip-drip going on. The fine citizens of Guangzhou (China) and Seoul (South Korea) are also seemingly obsessed with the short-form never ending loop. The subway trains are full of passengers staring at their phones, glued to latest video served up by the algorithm. You know you have a safe society when people can stay utterly enmeshed to their devices on public transport, without any fear of it getting stolen. You would be crazy to do the same here in the States. I've unfortunately have seen my share of phone snatching. Pro tip: at least don't be near the doors if you're doing to be staring at your phone.

I completely understand the allure of short-form videos. It's just another thing of social media created to keep us mindlessly occupied. I don't pretend to be a superior breed simply because I don't partake in TikTok or YouTube Shorts. There's no illusions here that browsing Reddit or going on X isn't the very same thing. We're all seeking novelty and excitement to placate the void when we are in between tasks. Heck, sometimes we even multitask. Taking a dump at the toilet has forever changed since the invention of the smartphone.

Here's a challenge: next time you poop, stare at nothing.

And this might not even be a problem that needs solving. Addictive qualities do not always create harm. Otherwise you would have to kill me to pry my morning coffee away. Social media is part of the fabric of modern life. Get over it. The genie is much too fat to go back into the bottle. Just because you're able to go an entire plane ride without looking or listening to anything doesn't make you some modern monk worthy of praise. If anything, you might be the weird nail that's sticking out, begging to be hammered.

Dopamine nation

The WiFi has been spotty at work this week, so my iPhone is effectively useless during work hours. (There’s no cellular network in our dungeon of an office.) Be that as it may, I still find myself reaching for it to check stuff, even though there’s nothing that can be checked. It’s like unlocking your phone during a flight: you know there’s nothing new to see, yet reflexes that’s been honed for over a decade is difficult to pause.

I like to think of myself as a mindful person, but I guess I’m not immune to the smartphone dopamine addiction. Every second of downtime must be filled with brand new information. The latest sports news on ESPN, or the latest nihilistic banter on Reddit. Boredom has been extinct since the first iPhone introduction. We did it!

Everybody does it, though. If anything, you look like the weird one if your face isn’t plastered to your phone. Imagine waiting with a crowd for an elevator, and you’re the only one staring into space. The strongly introverted me is not ready to stand out like that.

A coworker’s car failed, so he’s been walking to work. The obvious perplexity is: he doesn’t live anywhere near walking distances from work. (Otherwise the car failing would have zero bearing.) Instead of replacing the broken car, he’s choosing to commute on foot for over an hour. I admire the grit, but I have to wonder at his financial situation if he can’t easily replace the broken twenty year old car. Our State government job doesn’t pay extravagantly, but it’s sufficiently middle-class.

I get it: needing to replace a suddenly out of commission car is a huge blow to the wallet. But that’s why you keep an emergency fund. You know, for emergencies. I can’t fathom the stress living with such thin financial margins. Yes, right to privileged jail, right away.

I'm here. I'm back

After six years of using the standard sized iPhone, it’s really nice to be back to the one with the bigger screen. Not since my iPhone XS Max got unceremoniously taken away by the Feds for reasons totally not of my fault (no sarcasm) have I bought the larger iPhone. This iPhone 16 Pro Max I got last Friday, sitting at a 6.9 inch (nice) diagonal screen, is just about the biggest I would want a smartphone to be. Anything more and it’s a tablet.

The increased screen real estate is instantly better for typing. I’m noticeably making fewer typos tapping away on the larger keyboard. Another plus is reading books on the Kindle app: more space for text, less page flipping. The experience is so good that I can forgo using the iPad for reading. Content from the web and Youtube fills up the larger canvas beautifully. Why did I go so long in between giant iPhones? Oh right, I didn’t want to pay the $100 price premium. Hashtag broke boy.

Obviously, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is not as pocket-able as the non-Max version. Even as a manly man with manly pockets in his never-skinny manly jeans, the Max iPhone is cumbersome to carry. Before doing any motion that involves bending over or squatting down - like tying my shoes - I must take the phone out. Otherwise I risk it slipping out of the pocket, damaging that pristine titanium frame. The best way to carry the iPhone 16 Pro Max is in the hand, but don’t do that on public transportation, because some thug will for sure snatch it out of your hand and exit swiftly at the stop.

Another con with the Max iPhone is the difficultly of one-handed operation. I have to perform this juggle with the phone in order to position my fingers to reach the stuff at the top half of the display. Apple has a solution for this since the iPhone 6, but for some reason I prefer to do the finger juggle than the simple swiping shortcut.

Smartphones with giant screens: I like it a lot. It’s good to be back using one.