Blog

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

Must protect number one

I’ve noticed amongst people I know from out of town that when they visit San Francisco, they are eager to take a Waymo autonomous taxis. It’s almost a tourist attraction in it of itself. That is, until it proliferates into other cities and regions. I myself have yet to hail a Waymo ride, just like I’ve yet to take a ferry to visit Alcatraz island.

As a person of introverted proclivity, I am on paper a big fan of autonomous taxis. To not have another stranger (the driver) there at all - never mind interacting with them - is serene music to my ears. But as with everything in life, there are tradeoffs.

Robots may be predictable, but humans are definitely not. On public roads there are multitudes of negative potentialities you must account for. And I don’t see how a driver-less taxi is capable of handling those situations. For example: what if a gang of dudes walks over to your stopped Waymo in a menacing fashion? If I were driving, the law gives me protection to mash the gas and get the hell out of there by harmful means.

Would a robot do the same? Has Waymo put into code calculations of when it is appropriate to run people over? There’s got to be a hierarchy of which life is more valuable, right? Perhaps the person paying for the autonomous ride should be supreme. If the outside world is threatening the occupant(s) inside a Waymo car, stopping and locking the doors cannot be the only option!

You can bet that I too would run over a gang of bikers in my Range Rover, if so provoked. Would an autonomous car do the same? I would like to know the answer before getting into one.

It's not enough that I win

One of my recent YouTube rabbit holes is the Delivrd channel. It’s videos of a guy named Tomi negotiating car deals for his clients. His company charges a simple $1,000 to do the thing most people loathe about the car buying process: everything before signing on the dotted line. Customers save time and headaches, whilst getting a great price on the car they want.

American car dealerships truly make vehicle purchasing a horrible experience. Say what you want about the current CEO, but Tesla’s direct sales method is the absolute best. Customer can do the entire transaction in 15 minutes right on their smartphone. No longer do we have to beg some asshole salesperson to please take our money.

To be fair, the dealership system wouldn’t have its sour reputation if cars strictly sold at MSRP - no markups, no discounts. That fact that everybody practically pays a different price creates a competitive game, with opposing sides fighting to keep as much money as possible. The game then creates hurt feelings, because there are winners and losers.

Services like Delivrd have a finite ceiling it can scale to, at least with the current dealership system. Franchises can afford to give Tomi’s clients a great deal only because there exist other customers who are getting the opposite. People that pay above MSRP, plus all the add-ons, are effectively subsidizing those who are coming under invoice. For there to be winners, there has to be losers.

Credit card companies would close up shop tomorrow if every single account holder pays off their monthly balance promptly. In reality, it’s the profits from the minimum balance interest payers that allow the companies to give people like me 5% cash back. Someone loses so that I can win.

Is it fair?

Still too selfish

I enjoy hanging out with my nieces and nephews. Whether they be related by blood, or related by long-time friendship with their parents. I feel like this generation of kids will initially be very confused due to the sheer number of non-related uncles and aunties. Imagine a kid telling his teacher that’s he’s got 10 uncles, but in reality only two are his mother’s brothers.

Young kids have almost infinite amount of creativity and exploration. They are capable of imagining anything to be anything. That stool by the kitchen can be a Dunkin’ Donuts for the Hot Wheels cars to park at and eat. As an adult I do my best to humor them, even though the logical side of my brain keeps internally reminding me how absurd it is. The last thing I want to do is to crush a kid’s imagination. Let someone else inform them that Santa is not a real person.

I found that continually humoring a kid gets tiring for me. I guess I live too much in the logical world. It gets frustrating to keep up with the charade, especially when the kid demands input from you. Perhaps I don’t yet have the patience for child-rearing, because I cannot fathom having to do this all the time.

As of right now, I reckon I’m still too selfish to have children of my own. The tradeoffs and sacrifices that comes with child-rearing is not something I am willing to give. Is that being a bad citizen of the world? If anything, blame the modern first-world for providing so much optionality. I’d probably had kids a long time ago if I were stuck in a farm with zero entertainment, and engined transportation is were only a dream.

Don’t be so quick to judge the parents who merely stick their kids with an iPad. The demands for attention from children can be insatiably overwhelming.

Staying ahead

I was disappointed to see the Greek yogurt - my go-to breakfast food of choice - increasing in price at my local Whole Foods. The staples are getting pricier again! At least my staples are. I’m still smarting over the price of coffee jumping 20% thanks to President Trump’s tariffs. Priced out of a coffee? That would take a whole lot.

I don’t expect rich people to have scars from the high inflation of the post-COVID period. Which is why we shouldn’t expect the Trump administration to back down from import tariffs. These people understand fully well that it’s the American customers paying the tax. They’re just all wealthy enough to absorb it without care.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are simply, hopelessly, trying to stay ahead of inflation. Especially during this time of uncertain labor markets (unless you are a genius A.I. engineer). My place of employment is going through a budget contraction. I’m lucky to have a job, never mind any hope of yearly salary increases to keep up with inflation.

That means the purchasing power of my current salary will continue to decrease. To combat it means having to let go of some other spending. The aforementioned pricier Greek Yogurt? Well, I typically buy a can of something to drink whenever I enter Whole Foods. I gave that up soon as I saw the 50 cent increase. I have water at home, thank you.

Similar choices who have to made in the future, so long as inflation continues, and my income remains static. Perhaps Progressive will raise the insurance on my car again. To compensate, the Disney Plus subscription will have to go.

Big hats for big heads

As a dude with a sizable head, the one-size-fit-all hats that tend to be given out as freebies annoy the heck out of me. Because obviously those hats never fit my enlarged noggin. One size fit all is blatant false advertising! There are dozens of us!

I didn’t realize my head size is abnormally large until hats started to irrecoverably squish down my hair into an unsightly shape after wear. Why doesn’t my hair bounce back up like most other people do? Well, not when the hat is effectively putting a tourniquet on my dome.

Fitted baseball hats solved my problem. (They are individually sized, much like a shoe would be.) Finally, a hat that comfortably and completely covered my head. But there was a problem: I didn’t want to be a guy that wears baseball hats outside of a baseball stadium. I’m simply not of that age anymore.

A good thing about this online shopping era of ours is that you can find absolutely anything. If there’s a need, someone probably already solved it. Major clothing retailers aren’t likely to cater to the ends of the bell curve like me. An online shop that’s dedicated to a specific kind of clothing is where it’s at. (Long ago, I found appropriately-sized glasses frames for my large head.)

A Google search for “hats for large heads” gave me Oddjob Hats, so kudos to their marketing team for excellent SEO execution. Oddjob is a purveyor of headwear targeted specifically towards folks with larger than average head size. Finally, I am able to wear a “regular”, adjustable cotton hat without it looking ridiculous. I too can, on a bad hair day, quickly put on a cap and look somewhat stylish with it.

Do I still wish my head isn’t out of proportion with the rest of my body? Of course. Since head-shrinking surgery isn’t (yet?) a reality, I have to make do with what I’ve been given. Thanks, mom and dad!

Don't waste our money

Doesn’t it grind your gears when you see auto insurance advertisements? These companies raised our rates like crazy post COVID, and then have the audacity to spend money on ads! Here’s an idea: stop spending money on marketing, and lower the premiums for your customers. I don’t care if I’m only seeing cents in return. It’s not right!

I didn’t forget about you, PG&E! How dare you raise utility rates on Californians, and then run adverts on TV. Why even do marketing when most of us have no choice but to buy electricity and gas from you.

I’ve been lucky so far in my two years of weightlifting to avoid any major injury (knock on wood). The worse has only been a right shoulder impingement due to heavy upright rows. Despite my fondness for the exercise, I had to eliminate it from my rotation. Soon as I did that, the impingement was over.

The other chronic issue was minor golfer’s elbow. The culprit is the classic barbell flat bench. Every new increase in weight means a new stimulus for my elbow tendons to acclimatize. Unlike the upright row, I did not want to get rid of the flat bench. Barbell benching is part of the big three compound lifts (squat, bench, deadlift), and it’s as classic as it gets. The movement also happens to be fantastic for my chest growth.

Fortunately, this $20 piece of rubber completely solved my problem. A few sets of Reverse Tyler Twist with the Theraband FlexBar (per day) seems so uncomplicated to be effective, but it really did cure my chronic golfer’s elbow. Obviously, everybody’s anatomy is different, but for such a low price it’s worth a shot if you too suffer from the same malady.

God willing that’s all the injuries I will ever suffer from weightlifting. It’s not the pain that I am fearful for. Rather, it’s the missed time in the gym that an injury would undoubtedly result in. The proverbial gains must go forever onwards and upwards.

Not an emergency

I think the holy grail of personal finance is having an emergency fund. Obviously that comes after spending less than you make, and paying off whatever debts existing. But the emergency fund, at least for me, has always been a difficult nut to crack. Six months’ (or one year) worth of spending saved in a savings account. That’s a tall order, because it’s a lot of money, even for a miserly person like myself.

It’s easy on paper: I already spend less than I make, so it’s just a matter of slow accumulation. But something always interrupts the process. An errant rock flung into the windshield of the car means a thousand dollar replacement. It’s not always something unfortunate! Earlier this April, I unloaded my entire emergency fund into the stock market because it experienced a 20% correction. The perfect time to buy more. That also means I had to start from scratch vis a vis the emergency fund.

Maybe we’re being too strict about it? In some ways my investments can be an emergency fund. (Some would argue I shouldn’t have investments - that aren’t tax advantaged - before an emergency fund?) It’s not as liquid as a savings account, sure, but there are other monetary vehicles to use in an actual emergency. The first thing to come out of the wallet is the credit card anyways. That gives at least a few weeks lead time to then liquidate the necessary investment to pay for that spend.

It’s not ideal for sure, because any time you sell securities, you have to pay capital gains tax.

The safety and stress-reduction in having a proper emergency fund is undeniable. In fact, it can feel eerie because it leaves you with nothing to worry about financially. No debts, investments are automatic, and there’s enough in savings to sustain me for half a year, should I lose my job. Peace of mind can be surprisingly disconcerting when you first shut off the noise completely.