384. Now with COVID

 

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COVID finally catches up with me 

Day 795 of pandemic/340 since semi-return to normal - 5/20/2022

I am sitting at the long tables at the Bank Cafe for the first time since the pandemic started. This is because I need to charge my phone and backup battery and I can’t find a convenient wall outlet. Normally I do this at home, but I’ve had my phone on the energy saving setting and it managed to slip below 70% charge without my noticing. I kind of like this phone setting, all I don’t have is easy access to the flashlight and Google search. But I don’t see that it really saves that much. I expected the % left to stay nearly unchanged for days, which has not been the case. I will continue to try it over the weekend while I’m working, but may just return to the normal setting next week.

Recently I’ve been sitting in the lower level of the Bank Cafe, where the bathrooms are. It’s convenient for bathroom access and there tend to be fewer people down there since it’s been off limits for most of the past two years. And there are some comfortable chairs and sofas there as well. Still, it is underground and it is nice sitting up at ground level now and being able to see the street activity out the windows. 

Today the first Boeing Starliner is docking with the ISS. This is an unmanned mission to test all the equipment. Boeing has not looked good running this program. SpaceX looks so much better by comparison. Though landing the ships on land rather than at sea should be an improvement. I hope in time SpaceX will be able to do the rocket assisted landings they wanted. Maybe if Boeing screws up a few more times, NASA will fund that.

There’s a wonderful collection of videos about Classic American cars from the ‘50s and ‘60s called Charles Phoenix Joyride. Depending on the make and model, the peak of American car design was somewhere between 1955 and 1962. Probably. Curiously, the same cars preserved in Cuba by very strange economic forces. Of course these automobiles are also horrible in almost every other way. They are dangerous to the occupants and gas guzzlers. Still, lovely to look at. I’m surprised the MAGA crowd hasn’t built some propaganda around them, it would at least resonate with people of my age cohort -- people born between 1945 and 1965. Even I can wax nostalgic about that period: The foods I ate at the time that I couldn’t eat now. The good times prior to the bad times that followed. When we were naive enough to think well of our political leaders like Eisenhower and JFK. Of course it helps that at the time I didn’t know any people of color or people who were not at least trying to pass for heterosexual. And we will ignore the lead in the paint and gasoline and the radiation in the air and snow. Or the pollution in the rivers (where we would never go).

Still, it is amazing to find cars that are over 65 years old still looking so damn good.

5/23/2022

Just last night I saw an episode of Joyride featuring a ‘57 Bel Air, such a beauty.

This past weekend was Himalayan Fair in Berkeley’s Live Oak Park. So Berkeley. So difficult to get the vendors to understand the trash rules. After working a full shift on Saturday I was proclaiming two of the vendors the worst, most clueless I had ever seen. I only worked a half shift at the end of the day on Sunday, but I had already reconsidered. Yes, they were as bad as I thought, but, when you consider the situation from their perspective, we were like the priest of some really strange religious cult arbitrarily deciding what items go in which of the arbitrarily colored containers. One item even changed from day to day as it was called to our attention that the plates were “wax coated” and therefore landfill instead of compost. (And then this was corrected again so we went back to putting them in compost.) This is why I have “CHILL” written at the top of my Greening reminder list that I review before I leave the house.

Still, diapers in recycling and latex gloves and aluminum containers in compost makes no sense to me. But I’m sure they just see our three bins as festively colored.

The crew chief at the end of the day made what I considered “questionable” decisions about closing down stations serving the vendors sooner than I would have. I did make sure he was the one who had to deal with the consequences, though that meant I wasn’t around to see that. Saying the vendors should bring their end of the event trash to us is one thing, stopping them from just leaving it at the closest park trash can is another. If there is a next time, I can now remind him of what happened here.

Still it was nice to do this event again after the pandemic hiatus. Even if it does mean a 10 block walk back to Bart on the way home. (That actually isn’t true, or at least on Saturday there was a bus I could have taken had I waited for it. On Sunday I walked anyway because of a stunning waitress I had happened to notice on my walk the previous evening. There’s a fair amount of outdoor restaurant activity on Shattuck on the north side of University. Nice to see.

Because I wasn’t starting work until 4pm on Sunday, I decided to come a bit early and have lunch in Berkeley. I had done The Butcher’s Son deli last time, so this time I ate at Ike’s. Had a wonderful sandwich, though the bread was practically a dessert. I asked if they offered it as a wrap -- as Subway does -- but they don’t. A pity.

Day 799/344 - 5/24/2022 

Day of first COVID symptoms. Wouldn’t test positive until 5/26. Was probably infected 5/20-5/21. Damn close to 800 days since the pandemic began. 

5/24/22

Just woke up from an adventure movie of a dream with a plot I couldn’t begin to describe and a large cast and, right at the end, music by CCR. Looked at the time and it had been just about 90 minutes since I went to bed.

5/27/22

My standard pasta dish that doesn’t change from year to year but has changed almost entirely over 40 years. Only the broccoli remains.

5/30/22

Difficulty of managing post-covid!!! How long am I contagious? What can I do and what should I not do?

5/31/22

Finally sitting outside at Another Cafe. I was going to offer to switch seats with two guys who joined me here so I would be down wind. Glad I didn’t as they seem to be sicker than I am.

Another has a very good croissant. Now I’m going for my first uphill walk and then -- very quickly -- to the market for some essentials. 

Ran into information suggesting that I may not have been contagious last Monday and Tuesday like I feared. That’s assuming the vaccine did what it is supposed to do. And it looks like there’s a chance I could test negative before the weekend.

6/6/22

My first day out of isolation after twelve days in my apartment. Got a veggie breakfast croissant which I ate at home and now I’m sitting at the Bank Cafe with a chocolate croissant and my iced tea. I didn’t bring my personal cup, but I’m pretty sure I’m clean now after two negative tests. And my temp is down to 96F again, too.

Now I’m wondering exactly how much safer am I than before given all the different variants out there? Probably better but it’s not like I can start licking everything.

Day 820/8 days post-COVID - 6/14/2022

Today I made it back to the Pork Store for the first time since I came down with COVID. I’m happy to say my nose and taste buds are still working fine. In fact, I noticed that my favorite waitress was wearing a scent that I swear I remember from the ‘50s. So over 60 years ago, but I would swear it was a scent for little girls. It came in some sort of kit for girls pretending to be grown ups... something like the doctor kits I vaguely remember from the period. Maybe it’s been repackaged for adults?

6/21/2022

Post-covid life is more of a challenge than you would think. On the one hand I survived and everything worked out the way it was supposed to. But now I really want to relax -- after all, what are the odds of my catching it twice in a month! But then I just read in the NYT that the currently most prevalent variant doesn’t give much protection for the next two variants that are now spreading. Not that I have any idea which variant I had. And even if I did know, it wouldn’t help because I also don’t know which variants I could be exposed to in the future... or right now.

This past weekend I worked a North Beach street festival for the first time. I thought it was the Columbus Day event cleverly shifted to another month to avoid the push-back against all that Columbus represents. But I did a little more research and discovered this was an entirely different event and that -- “Italian Heritage Parade” -- event is still scheduled for the usual time. So I was wrong, but I think they would have been smarter doing what I was thinking.

I started out on Saturday with my mask on, but quickly gave up. For one thing I hadn’t used my anti-fogging spray -- turns out that is still necessary even when it’s warm -- and not many other people were and it was outdoors and not that crowded and I just finished isolating for over a week so give me a break. Anyway, I seem to have survived. 

6/23/2022 

And for an odd coda to my weekend: I’m sitting at Caffe Grecco enjoying a compensatory cookie and iced tea after picking up the latest check and crazy letter from the mentally ill woman in my building. So strange to be back in this block after spending so much of the last weekend working here. While we had one day of mid-90sF on Tuesday, it is now back to our usual weather, clear blue sky here, though I can hear the fog horns that signal there is a tongue of fog coming in through the Golden Gate. Every time I am forced to come over here to sign for a letter I didn’t catch at home, I give myself some kind of neighborhood treat. Last time it was an eclair from Victoria Bakery. This should be the last time, but if it happens again I may get an actual meal.

Quantum philosophy

6/29/2022

Over breakfast this morning at the Pork Store I was thinking about Free Will vs Determinism and quantum physics (quantum uncertainty and the collapse of the wave function) and how thoroughly the Ancient Greeks covered this material.

The Stoics hold my view of Determinism while the Epicureans managed to nail the uncertainty of quantum reality that can open the door to Free Will. Meanwhile Homer and the tragedians point out the consequences of Hard Determinism in the story of Cassandra who can actually see the future, which means there’s nothing she can do to change it.

It seems to me that one alternative to the Many Worlds approach to the Present moving into the Future, is a collapsing wave functions view. The future is an endless series of wave functions that collapse as we come to them. This is not inherently either Deterministic or allowing Free Will, but it does seem to allow for the possibility of Free Will. 

My personal view of Determinism is not as hard as the Cassandra story -- or any other story in which people can predict the future -- but I think the degree of uncertainty considering exactly how the next wave function will collapse is very limited. Similar to the uncertainty of very stable substances that will eventually undergo a change but probably not for a billion years or so.

313. About The Elegance of the Hedgehog

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Table of Contents progress

This is taking forever but I've now made it to 210. I'm not mentioning much but books, but at least it's something.

Sort of a cold?

I seem to be in between sick and well. (All better now.) Not quite one or the other. It’s finally getting cold -- which for us means below 60F -- so I’ve spent the last two mornings under the covers in my nice warm bed. I did want to get out of the house and I remembered the mezzanine at Another Cafe. It’s always warmer up there and also less crowded (since it isn’t clear if I’m really sick, I don’t know if I’m contagious). I did recall that the reason I stopped going to that cafe is that it’s often too crowded to get a seat, and so it was today. So I dropped down a block to the Beanstalk, which used to be tiny but has expanded and is now merely small -- a fraction of the size of Another Cafe, but there are plenty of seats free here. The reason I never come here is that it is so close to my house I don’t even get any exercise. It’s less than two blocks from my door. 

I haven’t been here since they expanded into the small space next door. It’s very nice, and they have an interesting menu. I really should come here for lunch.

The cafe is almost directly across Bush from the now defunct Nob Hill Theatre. It still says “Touch Our Junk” on the marque. The female equivalent of the Nob Hill Theatre, down on Market, is now a building of condos. On their marque it always said, “Touch the Magic” which I really think they should have named the new building, or at least the HOA. A Touch the Magic HOA would be so cool. I don’t know what is planned for the Nob Hill Theatre, but if it’s going the same route, I hope they save “Touch Our Junk.” I admit that would be a bit less likely.

The theatre was operating there when I moved here in 1993 and only shut down this year, so it has a long history. I tended to forget it was even there, only to be reminded by tourists pointing or taking photos. I don’t ever recall seeing anyone entering the place. No idea what their hours of operation were.

Emmanuel Kant airport

I just read on the BBC site that Kaliningrad is thinking about naming their airport after Emmanuel Kant. What an odd idea. Though he was known for being very punctual. Apparently you could set your watch by his appearance at the same point on his daily walk. And the airport could then specialize in impenetrable explanations for why flights were delayed or cancelled. The true nature of the “flight-in-itself” would be ultimately unknowable.

NYC rents

YouTube has been offering me videos on touring NYC apartments and I’ve been watching them. What is interesting is how similar they all are -- new buildings with largely the same amenities and high rents -- and also how similar it is to here. So I’ve been thinking about why this is the case. 

It would be better if I had some basic information like, the cost to build and the profit margin they are getting. My guess is that, the cost of building just a basic apartment in these buildings is so high that adding the laundry or slightly better bath and kitchen details, doesn’t make much of a difference. But, more importantly, they are competing with other similar buildings so they can’t not offer the same experience unless they want to knock down the price, which there’s no justification for doing. 

Following this same logic, there is really no obvious way to build new, moderately priced housing unless you are coming from a non-profit position with non-market based criteria for choosing tenants. Which, incidentally, would increase your cost of doing business and make your management job harder, rather than easier. 

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, yet again

I am to the restaurant scene. They are sampling sushi and this is where I, too, nibble at the book, afraid to read too much at a time because I know there’s so little left. 

We just had the scene where two of the women residents fail to recognize Renne as she leaves with with M. Ozu, and Renne speculates about vision. Isn’t this just a continuation or translation of what was said before about Phenomenology? What we “see” is what our brains decide to show us based on what they already know and other criteria we can only guess at. As M.Ozu says, they have never seen her so of course they don’t recognize her.

And we are getting foreshadowing. Renne has now taken over Paloma’s position, “I feel weary, to be honest, weary of all these rich people, all these poor people, weary of the whole farce...

“Something must come to and end; something must begin.”


Both “story” and music can touch us emotionally in a way few things can. And by “story” I mean both things like the plots of Anna Karenina or Elegance (especially the ending of the latter) but also story in the sense of the adventurous creation of fiction and Devi. This is why we read novels and listen to Beethoven’s 9th. It’s an aspect of life and art that most paternalistic religions are hostile to. That they wish to transcend. We don’t want Renne to die at the end of Elegance, but we would miss the catharsis if she didn’t. The emotional payoff of the novel would be much less. It’s kind of sick. It’s why the Dionysian tragic hero also must die. And to tie this in to another very diverse book, this is a point made very well in The Ship Who Sang with the aliens who are willing to trade technology for Shakespeare plays. It’s the emotions of Romeo and Juliet that we crave. This is what life is for, but what meditative religion is against. Art and philosophy are natural enemies in this regard. Is this why Socrates and Euripides favored the deus ex machina to save the day and avoid the full emotional payoff of tragedy.

227. Training the classes

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Cafes

Another Cafe is the only cafe at my level of my hill. I've written about it in the past, and I do like it, but it's a little more expensive (and I'm cheap) and it's often over-crowded. Today it's raining but I still needed to go out and do some shopping and thought I would give it a try. Alas, it was too crowded for me to get a seat. I am happy for them -- they are not in an obvious location for a cafe, so it's good to see them getting so much trade. I just wish I could get a seat too.

I had to walk three more blocks to this Starbucks.

Chapter 2

Violence and the Decadence of the Middle Classes 

Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorel

Dear God! That wasn't what we covered in the last chapter?

p81  ...Civil war has become very difficult since the discovery of the new firearms, and since the cutting of rectilinear streets in the capital towns. [The end of effective barricades.] The recent troubles in Russia seem even to have shown that Governments can count much more than was supposed on the energy of their officers. Nearly all French politicians had prophesied the imminent fall of Czarism at the time of the Manchurian defeats, but the Russian army in the presence of rioting did not manifest the weakness shown by the French army during our revolutions; nearly everywhere repression was rapid, efficacious, and even pitiless. The discussions which took place at the congress of social democrats at Jena show that the parliamentary Socialists no longer rely upon an armed struggle to obtain possession of the State. [The Great War YouTube series has recently covered the 100th anniversaries of both Russian revolutions in 1917, so Sorel was only right about this up to a point. All governments have tipping points.]
...

p82 Everything becomes a question of valuation, accurate estimation, and opportunism; [he's talking about Jean Jaurès here] much skill, tact, and calm audacity are necessary to carry on such a diplomacy, i.e. to make the workers believe that you are carrying the flag of revolution, the middle class that you are arresting the danger which threatens them, and the country that you represent an irresistible current of opinion. The great mass of the electors understands nothing of what passes in politics, and has no intelligent knowledge of economic history; they take sides with the party which seems to possess power, and you can obtain everything you wish from them when you can prove to them that you are strong enough to make the Government capitulate...
...

p85 Jaurès, who was very much mixed up in all the ups and downs of Dreyfusim, had rapidly judged the mentality of the upper middle class, into which he had not yet penetrated. He saw that this upper middle class was terribly ignorant, gapingly stupid, politically absolutely impotent; he recognized that with people who understand nothing of the principles of capitalist economics it is easy to contrive a policy of compromise on the basis of an extremely broad Socialism... [Édouard] Vaillant does not possess those remarkable qualities of suppleness of mind, and perhaps even peasant duplicity, which shine in Jaurès, and which have often caused people to say that he would have made a wonderful cattle-dealer.
...

I'm assuming this isn't a charming Gallic complement.

He restates what Marx has to say about the end of capitalism and the evolution to the proletarian stage,

p88 Socialists should therefore abandon the attempt (initiated by the Utopians) to find a means of inducing the enlightened middle class to prepare the transition to a more perfect system of legislation; their sole function is that of explaining to the proletariat the greatness of the revolutionary part they are called upon to play. By ceaseless criticism the proletariat must be brought to perfect their organizations; they must be shown how the embryonic forms which appear in their unions may be developed , so that, finally they may build up institutions without any parallel in the history of the middle class; that they may form ideas which depend solely on their position as producers in large industries, and which owe nothing to middle-class thought; and that they may acquire habits of liberty with which the middle class nowadays are no longer acquainted. 

This doctrine will evidently be inapplicable if the middle class and the proletariat do not oppose each other implacably, with all the forces at their disposal; the more ardently capitalist the middle class is, the more the proletariat is full of warlike spirit and confident of its revolutionary strength, the more certain will be the success of the proletarian movement.

p89 The middle class with which Marx was familiar in England was still, as regards the immense majority, animated by their conquering, insatiable, and pitiless spirit, which had characterized at the beginning of modern times the creators of new industries and the adventurers launched on the discovery of unknown lands. When we are studying the modern industrial system we should always bear in mind this similarity between the capitalist type and the warrior type; it was for very good reasons that the men who directed gigantic enterprises were named captains of industry. This type is still found today in all its purity in the United States...

...If... the middle class, led astray by the chatter of the preachers of ethics and sociology, return to an ideal of conservative mediocrity, seek to correct the abuses of economics, and wish to break with the barbarism of their predecessors, then one part of the forces which were to further the development of capitalism is employed in hindering it, an arbitrary and irrational element is introduced, and the future of the world becomes completely indeterminate.

p90 This indetermination grows still greater if the proletariat are converted to the ideas of social peace at the same time as their masters... 

...Jaurès is as enthusiastic as the clericals about measures which turn away the working classes from the idea of the Marxian revolution... he founds his own hopes on the simultaneous ruin of the capitalistic and revolutionary spirit.

I haven't invoked Naphtha, but I have been thinking about him, and also the monks of The Brothers K. Naphtha would not be with Jaurès on this point, but, as keen as he was to see the fall of the middle class, I don't think the Marxist revolution depicted here would suit him either, as it would seem to preserve the machinery of the industrial/scientific age. I don't believe the Soviet Union was what he was hoping for.

...how can they hope to give back to the middle class an ardor which is spent?

It is here that the role of violence in history appears to us as singularly great, for it can, in an indirect manner, so operate on the middle class as to awaken them to a sense of their own class sentiment...

p91 To repay with black ingratitude the benevolence of those who would protect the workers, to meet with insults the homilies of the defenders of human fraternity, and to reply by blows to the advances of the propagators of social peace... is a very practical way of indicating to the middle class that they must mind their own business and only that.

I believe also that it may be useful to thrash the orators of democracy and the representatives of the Government, for in this way you insure that none shall retain any illusions about the character of acts of violence. But these acts can have historical value only if they are the clear and brutal expression of the class war: the middle classes must not be allowed to imagine that, aided by cleverness, social science, or high-flown sentiments, they might find a better welcome at the hands of the proletariat.
...

...Must we believe that the Marxian conception is dead? By no means, for proletarian violence comes upon the scene just at the moment when the conception of social peace is being held up as a means of moderating disputes; proletarian violence confines employers to their role of producers, and tends to restore the separation of the classes...

Proletarian violence not only makes the future revolution certain, but it seems also to be the only means by which the European nations -- at present stupefied by humanitarianism -- can recover their former energy... A growing and solidly organised working class can compel the capitalist class to remain firm in the industrial war; if a united and revolutionary proletariat confronts a rich middle class, eager for conquest, capitalist society will have reached its historical perfection.

...Let us add... if properly conducted... [proletarian violence] will suppress the Parliamentary Socialists, who will no longer be able to pose as the leaders of the working classes and the guardians of order.


In terms of class identity, Sorel reminds me a bit of Foucault, except that I'm not sure if Sorel is always saying what he really means. He's laying down the rules for propagating class war, but isn't he also giving away too much if that's the outcome he really wants? You can also take what he says here as a guide to undermining class war. 

And I'm particularly confused about his attitude towards his own, middle, class. Is he trying to buck it up or destroy it?