Jumpers

 

Our Big Chill

A few Ann Arbor expats gathered in my apartment in the Fillmore district of San Francisco in the early '70s.

I was born in Detroit two years after the end of World War II. My family moved into one of the city’s expanding suburbs, Royal Oak, amidst a cluster of other families that consisted of returning soldiers, wives and boys and girls named David, Susan, Bill, Bob, Jim, Mark, Bonnie, Nancy, Kathy, Fred, Peter, Carole, Paul, Diane, Mary, John, and so on and so forth.

We were the leading edge of the Baby Boom generation -- a cohort so large that we broke every institution we encountered. When we got to school, there were never enough classrooms, chairs, desks, books, or other resources. Teachers suddenly had to handle many more students at once than had previously been the case.

When we reached our teens, there simply was not enough overt passion in the music that our parents and older siblings enjoyed. Thus, the mass market for rock and roll was born.

Meanwhile, the political economy of the nation newly victorious in the second war of wars dictated that America become an empire, as all conquerors since time immemorial have done. 

As we grew up, America's capitalist empire -- imperialistic, arrogant, and consumed by fear of communism -- spread globally.

We were served books like "Our Friend the Atom," a distinctly propagandistic reader that was our government's attempt to convince us, years before we could vote, of the rightness of its policy to develop nuclear power plants while stockpiling WMD's to protect us from the Russians, Chinese, and other socialistic foreigners.

Much of the rest of my generation's story is written contemporaneously in music, in poetry, in film, and in our collective memory. Confronted with the worldview that our fate was to conquer the world, many of us rebelled, begging to differ. 

We opposed the war in Vietnam. We marched in support of the civil rights movement. We launched the modern women's liberation movement and the gay liberation movement. We smoked dope and dropped acid and danced in the streets.

We were environmentalists and self-help advocates, idealists and cynics, hippies and radicals. For our guides, we had Dylan and the Beatles, the Stones, and so many more. One of our earliest heroes, when we were still kids, was Elvis. The music always reflected us as the ragged edges of a churning chainsaw that sliced our way through society trying to establish a new way of being.

Did we succeed in doing that? The culture wars persist to this day, so I guess not. But some of us are still trying.

(I published an early version of this essay in 2006.)

LINKS:

• US will help train Ukraine fighters on F-16 jets, Biden tells G7 (Financial Times)

• G7 summit: Zelensky accuses some Arab leaders of 'blind eye' to war ahead of Japan trip (BBC)

• “China’s Navy has expanded dramatically over the last two decades”—closing the military gap (Economist)

• World watches in disbelief and horror as U.S. nears possible default (WP)

• An LGTBQ+ pride event usually held in Tampa, Florida, has been canceled after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bevy of anti-LGBTQ+ bills into law this week. “In the end, we didn’t want to take any chances," the city's Pride president said. [HuffPost]

• Anti-Trump Republicans increasingly desperate to shake up race (The Hill)

• Preaching Tolerance Abroad, as Hatred Surges at Home (NYT)

• Fearing leaks, Apple restricts its employees from using ChatGPT and AI tools (Ars Technica)

• OpenAI launches a free ChatGPT app for iOS (CNN)

• ChatGPT Is Already Obsolete — The next generation of AI is leaving behind the viral chatbot. (Atlantic)

• Striking Hollywood scribes ponder AI in the writer's room (NPR)

• Meta and Google news adds fuel to the open-source AI fire (Venture Beat)

• I Finally Bought a ChatGPT Plus Subscription—and It’s Worth It (Wired)

• With ChatGPT, Honeycomb Users Simply Say What They’re Looking for (New Stack)

• The Birth of the Personal Computer (New Yorker)

• Google Is Spared a Search-Engine Switch by a Major Partner (WSJ)

• Uber will lease out entire office building in San Francisco (SFGate)

• Georgia prosecutor clears decks for possible Trump charges (The Hill)

• Human-evolution story rewritten by fresh data and more computing power (Nature)

• The world’s largest lakes are shrinking dramatically, and scientists say they have figured out why (CNN)

• New York City is sinking due to weight of its skyscrapers, new research finds (Guardian)

• Floridians Demand to Know Where Disney Is Going so They Can Come With (New Yorker)

The Treasure

During my first divorce, as I moved my stuff in my car to a friend’s house across town, everything got jumbled together in boxes, so it was hard to sort out. A month later, I moved again, this time to another house where I would spend most of the coming year.

Slowly, as I settled in, I unpacked the boxes and sorted through old letters and books, some reaching back to my childhood. My oldest son, then about eight, had just become a big baseball fan, rooting for the Giants, playing little league, and collecting baseball cards. I told him about my own card collection back in the Fifties, when I was around his age.

He came over to spend the night one Saturday and I dug through my boxes to see whether any baseball-related stuff had survived the many moves I'd made since childhood. Out tumbled an old scrapbook, circa 1958, with prime baseball cards of legendary stars including Willy Mays, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams, among others, glued inside.

We both gasped. Collectively, these old cards might be worth a small fortune! We were both looking for positive signs that our future might turn out to be brighter than it appeared to be at that time, so this was potentially good news.

This was long before the likes of eBay, so I checked directly with collectors, who explained the cards might be valuable assuming they could be removed from the scrapbook without damaging them.

Alas, upon further investigation it turned out that removing them would destroy them. So we just left them in the place where had I pasted them all those decades ago. 

We still loved having them and he would show them to friends when they came over. Eventually, I realized the only real value they had was they helped us create a memory of one moment together. And over time, I’ve come to treasure that memory much more than money anyway.

LINKS:

• McCarthy says House could vote on debt ceiling deal as soon as next week (CNBC)

• Biden declares ‘America will not default,’ says he’s confident of budget deal with GOP lawmakers (AP)

• Supreme Court shields Twitter from liability for terror-related content and leaves Section 230 untouched (CNN)

• Trust in Supreme Court fell to lowest point in 50 years after abortion decision, poll shows (AP)

• Leak suspect shared classified secrets with foreign nationals, prosecutors say (WP)

• Adults in Florida can now be criminally charged if they don’t use the bathroom that matches the sex they were assigned at birth after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed one of the most draconian bathrooms bills in the U.S. Advocates have raised concern over the bill's vague text and how the law would be enforced. [HuffPost]

• Texas Legislature Bans Transgender Medical Care for Children (NYT)

• U.S. cities are growing again after losing population during the pandemic. Most of the 37 cities with more than 500,000 people saw their populations fall in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. All but six are rebounding, according to new census data. (WP)

• Hiding Behind the AI Apocalypse (Atlantic)

• Meta built a code-generating AI model similar to Copilot (TechCrunch)

• In Battle Over A.I., Meta Decides to Give Away Its Crown Jewels (NYT)

• 6 major risks of using ChatGPT, according to a new study (ZDNet)

• Here’s How AI Will Come for Your Job (Atlantic)

• Where AI evolves from here (Axios)

• A professor falsely accused his class of using ChatGPT. Their diplomas are in jeopardy. (WP)

• TikTok Feeds Teens a Diet of Darkness (WSJ)

• The Daring Robot Surgery That Saved a Man’s Life (Wired)

• Why former Trump White House lawyer thinks Trump will go to jail (CNN)

• The wind-turbine industry should be booming. Why isn’t it? (Economist)

• Russia fires 30 cruise missiles at Ukrainian targets; Ukraine says 29 were shot down (AP)

• Russia launches ninth wave of missile attacks on Kyiv this month (BBC)

• The Latest Rift Among Ukraine’s Allies Is Whether to Send F-16s (NYT)

• Iran warns Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers not to violate its water rights, over Helmand River (AP)

• Colombia plane crash: Children reportedly survived 17 days in jungle (BBC)

• Why birds and their songs are good for our mental health (WP)

• Octopuses may have nightmares about predators attacking them (New Scientist)

• VIDEO: Scientists Create Detailed Digital Replica of the Titanic Shipwreck

  (Atlantic Productions/magellan)

• Napkinless Man With Grease-Covered Fingers Realizes He Trapped In A Prison Of His Own Creation (The Onion)

Limits of the First Order

Every profession has its sleazy fringe. Lawyers have ambulance-chasing hucksters, cops have racists who beat up people, politicians…don’t get me started.

Journalists, unfortunately, are no exception. Over at the extreme edge are the paparazzi, who hide behind press freedoms to torment Royals and other celebrities.

The photographers that allegedly hid their license plates in Tuesday night’s incident involving Harry and Meghan in New York should be stripped of their press credentials, if the initial reports are accurate, and prosecuted for traffic violations as a bare minimum.

The rest of us are sick of them polluting our work environment with their intrusions on personal privacy. They do not represent us and no honest journalist I know would ever treat anyone the way they do.

For that matter, nor do we want anything to do with the conspiracy propagandists on right-wing networks and social media. Congress has every right to narrow Section 230 of the CDA, and the Big Tech companies have very right to limit the voices of those who circulate the conspiracy theories that undermine democracy.

And yes, Fox had every right (and obligation IMHO) to get rid of Tucker Carlson.

I am a “hawk” on these issues; I believe in strengthened government regulation to limit press freedom where necessary and appropriate. A First Amendment absolutist I am not.

LINKS:

• Harry, Meghan in 'near catastrophic' New York paparazzi car chase, spokesperson says (Reuters)

• Prince Harry and Meghan made getaway in NYC taxi after being trailed by paparazzi (AP)

• Supreme Court denies request to block Illinois ban on semi-automatic rifles (CBS)

• Biden says he is ‘confident’ on reaching debt ceiling deal with Republicans (NBC)

• Biden pushes back at tougher work requirements for welfare pushed by Republicans in debt-ceiling talks (USA Today)

• Missouri ends rule limiting transgender care for minors, some adults (The Hill)

• Key states are nearing a deal to protect the Colorado River. California, Arizona and Nevada would voluntarily conserve a major portion of their river water in exchange for over $1 billion in federal funds. (WP)

• As Ukrainian Attack Looms, Putin Faces Setbacks and Disunity in Russian Forces (NYT)

• A US-made Patriot missile defense system being used by Ukraine likely suffered some damage from a Russian strike, two US officials said, adding that it did not appear to have been destroyed. (Reuters)

• ChatGPT Scams Are Infiltrating the App Store and Google Play (Wired)

• AI leaders: Please regulate us (Axios)

• Texas A&M Prof Flunks All His Students After ChatGPT Falsely Claims It Wrote Their Papers (Rolling Stone)

• How AI Knows Things No One Told It (Scientific American)

• How do you solve a problem like out-of-control AI?  (MIT Tech Review)

• Will ChatGPT Replace Google? Here's What We Know (Motley Fool)

• Inside the AI culture war (Politico)

• Before AI Takes Over, Make Plans to Give Everyone Money — The U.S. needs policies now to support workers made redundant by artificial intelligence. (Atlantic)

• 'Age of Danger' explores potential risks because AI doesn't understand rules of war (NPR)

• StableStudio is Stability AI’s latest commitment to open-source AI (Verge)

• An AI glossary: the words and terms to know about the booming industry (NBC)

• The Story Behind the Stabbing of a San Francisco Tech Exec (WSJ)

• Man Plagued By Intrusive Thoughts Of Wanting To Help Others (The Onion)

Red Poppies

 

More Flowers

 

Why Journalists Speak Out

Over many decades of teaching classes, appearing on panels, speaking at ethics seminars, and doing or supervising hundreds of reporting projects, one of the most frequent questions I faced was how journalists were supposed to possibly stay objective when doing this work.

The short answer to that is that we can’t. And we don’t.

In the course of producing stories, we learn so much about the various people and institutions we cover, it is simply not possible to avoid drawing conclusions and forming opinions about them.

So of course we do. And the more informed we become, the stronger our opinions tend to become. It’s only human.

The question is what do we then do with our opinions? Can we keep covering the same stories, pretending to be objective?

Traditionally, in newspapers, there was a strict line between the reporting we did in news coverage and the opinions expressed on the editorial page. Beat reporters rarely ventured over to the opinion side, which was considered unseemly. But there was more than a bit of irony in that as we were often the best-informed people employed by the paper on the subjects on the editorial page.

One attempt to bridge this gap was to have the beat writers produce analysis pieces, which bridged the gap between reporting and opinion and were traditional journalism’s answer to the objectivity problem.

The distinction between “analysis” and “opinion” was largely fictional but it was a useful fiction that newspapers employed successfully for many years.

Another aspect of the objectivity problem was that the ownership of the newspaper often held different opinions and loyalties on the major topics of coverage from the reporters and editors who provided that coverage on a day-in, day-out basis.

This led to a great deal of tension on occasion between the news staff and those in charge of the editorial pages. Trust me, anyone who ever visited the nearest bar to a big-city newspaper office knows exactly what I am talking about.

When baby boomers — the largest generation ever to hit American workplaces including media — came along, we brought a new level of tension to this traditional dichotomy between news and opinion — and the myth of objectivity.

For one thing, we were better educated than the older generation and way too many of us had been shaped by the civil rights and anti-war movements to remain neutral on the great issues of the day. We weren’t neutral at all on questions like racism or colonial wars — we knew right from wrong.

Furthermore, we didn’t like what we found of the culture inside most newsrooms, which was all too often misogynistic, racist, homophobic and more like an arm of the local police union than a force for truth.

At the same time, we met heroes — established reporters and editors who resisted all those entrenched prejudices and practices that simply acted to reinforce powerful interests. These guys challenged those very interests on more than one occasion.

We also discovered that there were plenty of enlightened owners and executives in media who would support the type of crusading journalism we aspired to, so we worked for them whenever possible and joined the great muckraking traditions that long have served as a counterweight to mainstream, by-the-books news mongering in America.

When it came to remaining objective, we agreed that it was absolutely necessary to stay open-minded when we were gathering the facts about any situation. We needed to be open to adjusting our analysis as those facts came to light, and it was vital that we remained our own worst devil’s advocate to counter the biases and prejudices we inevitably brought to the story.

But you can’t discover the truth as you wish it to be, you have to accept the truth as you discover it to be. Equally importantly, you can’t bend the facts to fulfill the wishes or desires of your bosses or your audience — the chips must fall where they may.

But once all of that was said, once you’d been as fair as you could possibly be during the process of gathering facts, it became completely appropriate and indeed obligatory for any journalist of conscience to speak out when asked about the meaning of what we had found.

That’s how many of us became what some considered advocates or activists as well as journalists during our careers. We were often called “alternative journalists” or “new journalists” or “gonzo journalists.” Take your pick. And of course the traditionalists denounced us, for good reason. But once our reporting was complete, we made a point of speaking out. 

That practice remains controversial to this day. But as my esteemed former Stanford colleague, Prof. Ted Glasser, once observed (and I paraphrase), “In the end, being a good citizen has to trump being a good journalist.”

Amen.

Note: I’ve published this essay previously a number of times, most recently in January.

LINKS:

• US debt ceiling talks turn to work requirements for benefits programs (Reuters)

• North Carolina’s GOP-led General Assembly overrides Democratic governor’s 12-week abortion ban veto (CNN)

• Russia launches air raid attack against Kyiv (CBS)

• Ukraine says it shot down advanced weapons fired from Russia (Today)

• Microsoft Says New A.I. Shows Signs of Human Reasoning (NYT)

• ChatGPT's clever way of balancing 9 eggs with other objects convinced some Microsoft researchers that AI is becoming more like humans (Business Insider)

• Mr. ChatGPT goes to Washington: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testifies before Congress on AI risks. (CNN)

• US Senator Uses ChatGPT for Opening Remarks at a Hearing on AI (Bloomberg)

• Digital data guardrails are the first step in regulating AI (The Hill)

• Can We Stop Runaway A.I.? (New Yorker)

• Google Bard gets another update that makes it better for research (TechRadar)

• Open-Source AI Is Gaining on Google and ChatGPT (The Information)

• ChatGPT is not ‘artificial intelligence.’ It’s theft. (Jesuit Review)

• Couple uses artificial intelligence to redesign backyard: ‘AI is truly gonna take over so many jobs’ (Yahoo)

• The Return to the Office Has Stalled (WSJ)

• A lot of offices are still empty — and it's becoming a major risk for the economy (NPR)

• A lonely nation: Has the notion of the 'American way' promoted isolation across history? (AP)

• Move over, U.S. dollar. China wants to make the yuan the global currency. (WP)

• Oceans have been absorbing the world’s extra heat. But there’s a huge payback (Guardian)

• Bill Gates is full of regret about missed vacations and broken relationships in commencement speech: ‘You are not a slacker if you cut yourself some slack’ (Fortune)

• George Santos Pleads Nonexistent (New Yorker)

49ers

(NOTE: An earlier version of this essay dates from 2006.)

Currently, one of my favorite sites is Found Magazine. In the collegial spirit of the Internet, I am starting to post similar items, but only those that land directly in front of my house in the Mission District of San Francisco.

My side of the street -- the west side -- is the recipient of many lost items, courtesy of a wind tunnel that swirls through here much as those that used to cause those legendary pop-ups at old Candlestick Park. This one I am posting tonight came drifting into my front yard the other day. 

The note reads: 

Michelle & Justin:

I am trying to sell my car. I need bus money only to get hom(sic) to Detroit. Michelle this is your moms(sic) car. Do you want it? My food stamps didn't come. I don't want to cause anyone any trouble. I just want to get home!! I'll see you later.

The author shares my original hometown -- Detroit -- which makes his story more poignant to me. But San Francisco is not for everyone. I do hope he gets enough bus money to make it back to the Motor City. 

***

Most of us who live here, in this city perched unsteadily above the San Andreas Fault on the tip of a peninsula that measures almost precisely 7 by 7 miles square come from elsewhere, and have spent many years hearing references to a certain number -- 49. 

But how many of us realize how mathematically perfect this number is for our town? We all know, of course about the Gold Rush that built San Francisco back in 1849, and therefore we probably can guess the origin of the moniker "49ers" that in the present day also refers to our professional football team.

But 49 can convey other qualities as well, one of which is boom or bust. You might even call it the San Francisco Sound. It's our cycle of life here, and we all know it goes with the territory, all 49 square miles of it.

LINKS:

• UK promises attack drones, more missiles for Ukraine as Zelenskyy meets Sunak on European tour (AP)

• Wagner chief offered to give Russian troop locations to Ukraine, leak says (WP)

• Fewer than expected migrants arrived at the border after Title 42 expired, but officials remain on high alert (CNN)

• Over Decades, Congress Failed Repeatedly to Address Immigration Dysfunction (NYT)

• Durham report criticizes FBI investigation into Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia (PBS)

• Debt-Ceiling Talks’ Late Start Amps Up Pressure on Congress (WSJ)

• For Biden, negotiating the debt ceiling may be the safest option (The Hill)

• Abortion Showdown in North Carolina May Hinge on a Single Vote (NYT)

• AI Lets Microsoft Target Google and Google Target Amazon (Bloomberg)

• AI presents political peril for 2024 with threat to mislead voters (AP)

• OpenAI’s new tool attempts to explain language models’ behaviors (TechCrunch)

• The Luddites of Hollywood — The writers’ strike is a struggle to give workers a say over how new technologies like artificial intelligence are adopted. (Atlantic)

• The apocalypse isn’t coming. We must resist cynicism and fear about AI (Guardian)

• ChatGPT get-rich-quick schemes are flooding the web (WP)

• I’m an ER doctor. Here’s how I’m already using ChatGPT to help treat patients (Fast Company)

• The Disappearing White-Collar Job (WSJ)

• States are sending people to college for free to fight a teacher shortage. Apprenticeships allow trainees to make money while they learn the craft and earn their credentials. In the past 17 months, programs have been certified in 16 states. (WP)

• Mormon church has $100bn ‘clandestine hedge fund’, says whistleblower (Guardian)

• The “return to the office” won’t save the office (Vox)

• A Low-Tech Money-Saving Hack Is Thriving on TikTok (Wired)

• The Second Amendment Allows a Ban on the AR-15 (Bloomberg)

• VIDEO: ‘I Don’t Know What the Future Holds’: An Afghan Family at the U.S. Border (NYT)

• China sentences 78-year-old US citizen to life in prison for spying (BBC)

• Vice Media to Sell Itself as It Files for Bankruptcy (WSJ)

• Elizabeth Holmes Isn’t Fooling Anyone (Atlantic)

• Before His Killing, Tech Executive Bob Lee Led an Underground Life of Sex and Drugs (WSJ)

• He defied Alzheimer’s for two decades. Scientists want to know how. (WP)

• World’s Wealthy Call For Removal Of Stars Obstructing View Of Universe (The Onion)

 

Escapee

 NOTE: I published the first version of this essay back in 2006.

When I was about 13, before my first real job, I was a paperboy. I rode my bike around our neighborhood, enduring the hazards of vicious dogs (one bit me in the butt); workers driving their pickups home drunk a couple hours after the afternoon shift (one ended up in the ditch); not to mention the frequent distractions of some cute girl walking by in shorts, lonely housewives who wanted to talk, or my main objective -- getting back out to the massive corn field behind our subdivision.

That was because I had created an entire world out in the corn, with documentation to prove it. It was a world based on running. After I had smashed down a narrow swath of corn stalks for 50 yards or so, it would intersect with other paths I had previously created. At each of these intersections, I added a circle, much like those that confound visitors to Washington, D.C., or Paris.

This was my private world, and only I (and the farmer, eventually) knew about it. I can only guess what he thought when he directed his harvester through my world, but being as I was young and irresponsible at the time, I didn't really care. I ran through my world, rebuilding a skinny young body from the ravages of rheumatic fever. I pushed myself relentlessly, as I raced around this field, repeating my mantra, "I am not lazy, I am not lazy, I am not lazy."

My detailed maps and stories about that era are lost to posterity, however, due to my decision some years ago to vaporize the evidence that I had ever been so immature in the first place. Tonight is the first time I've ever written about it.

Also, I suppose that farmer is long since dead, and if any crimes were inadvertently committed by ruining a small portion of his crop, certainly the statute of limitations has expired by now, so I can safely confess.

One day, when collecting cash payments from my customers for the Bay City Times, an older lady asked me to come inside her house. Reluctantly, I did so. She offered me tea and started talking about how she had recently lost her mother. Her sadness horrified me, especially when she started crying out "I'm so lonely!" 

At that point, I quickly climbed back on my bicycle and rode away from there, and tried my best to never talk to her again. 

As for the cash I collected, I substituted newer coins for the older ones when I paid off the newspaper. That’s how I got most of what we call in my family my “Old Money Collection,” which resides in a small wooden box created by my great great grandfather in Scotland back in the 1880s.

But back to another day as the neighborhood newspaper boy, as I was riding my route, a lady called to me to help with what she explained was a very serious problem. It seems that her dog had hung itself. As I went into her backyard I saw that the dog, a black spaniel that barked a lot, had choked on its leash while trying to jump over the fence around its cage.

I carefully lifted its body, which was already stiff, away from the scene, undid its collar, dug a hole, and buried it.

Afterward, I gave the lady her dog collar and headed back to the cornfield and my own secret world. 

LINKS:

• The War on Poverty Is Over. Rich People Won. (Atlantic)

• Crossing jungle and desert, migrants navigate a sea of misinformation (WP)

• Backlogged Courts and Years of Delays Await Many Migrants (NYT)

• Deadly Cyclone Mocha slams into Bangladesh, Myanmar (Al Jazeera)

• Plunging Tax Revenue Accelerates Debt-Ceiling Deadline (WSJ)

• Democrats press Biden to use 14th Amendment on debt ceiling (The Hill)

• 7 doomsday scenarios if the U.S. crashes through the debt ceiling (WP)

• China’s recovery lifts U.S. companies’ sales as domestic consumers pull back spending (CNBC)

• North Carolina's governor vetoed a 12-week abortion ban, setting up an override fight (NPR)

• Why Ron DeSantis Is Limping to the Starting Line (NYT)

• The Curious Case of the Missing Google Assistant — Google’s generative AI chatbot Bard took center stage at the company’s I/O conference. The company’s answer to Siri was left backstage. (Wired)

• After red state shootings, gun control advocates see glimmers of change (WP)

• Zelenskyy praises Germany’s €2.7bn military aid pledge to Ukraine (Financial Times)

• Russia says two of its commanders killed as Kyiv wages Bakhmut offensive (Reuters)

• Israel and Islamic Jihad agree ceasefire after days of violence (CNN)

• Turkey will hold a runoff election on May 28, with Erdogan in the lead (CNBC)

• An Erdogan Loss in Turkey Would Stir Relief in the West and Anxiety in Moscow (NYT)

• Laptop Gets To Age When It Can Be Lightly Tossed Sometimes (The Onion)

Timing

(NOTE: This essay is from 2006.)

The graceful rhythm of a baseball game is as good a place as any to start with in this post. Because baseball is all about timing. One thing leads to another.

There's a wonderful children's book called Buzz Buzz Buzz It is about the random interconnectedness of life. A bee stings a farm animal, which races away, triggering a series of unlikely events that eventually reach in a circular way all the way back to -- you guessed it -- the bee.

This underlying principle expresses itself in my life almost every day, often in simple ways. One thing leads to another.

That, combined with the realization that standing in line at Safeway may indeed be as good as it gets, leads me to a mathematical puzzle I'm confronting. Let's say I already know the answer, and that it is (to select a random number) 30.

Now, let’s say the only way to get to 30 is in increments of one, and we currently are at, let's say, point 7, though tonight we will reach point 8.

Now, any school child can deduce that we have 23 more steps to go. If we can only achieve at most one of those per day, and today is the 4th of the month, it is clear that the soonest we could reach our goal is the 26th of the month.

An interesting wrinkle to this problem is that the hard deadline for reaching our goal is also the 26th. Given the many competing priorities, and the random distribution of unanticipated disruptive events, it's virtually impossible, therefore, to reach our goal.

We have options. We could reduce our goal from 30 to a lower number; or we could increase the steps we take per day to more than one.

On the other hand, faced with particular dilemma, we might change course entirely, realizing we were asking the wrong question in the first place, giving far too much weight to one particular outcome (that represented by 30), when other, deeper questions remain unaddressed.

BTW, this is the kind of problem people face every day in Silicon Valley. This is a place of puzzling patterns mixing questions needing answers and answers seeking the right question.

An algorithm is a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, usually expressed as a mathematical formula. In the world of high tech, algorithms drive virtually every outcome.

But I don't intend to write much about my professional life, despite the descriptor of this blogspace as existing at the "intersection of the personal, political and professional." For that, I maintain another blog: Editor's Pick.

So, what does any of this have to do with Safeway and Buzz Buzz Buzz? Well, last night was the best night I've had at Safeway in a long, long time. We were shopping for the components for a late dinner, and with a little persistence, we found them all. I get strangely excited at the prospect of cooking a meal for other people, partly because I never follow recipes and the experience is therefore destined to be one big experiment. If it is successful, that's nice, but it will most likely not be repeated, not precisely, because I add or subtract ingredients at will and according to what catches my eye.

So eating me with is like a one night stand. Over time, however, since my culinary range is so narrow, just a few main dishes appear over and over -- though as my kids would be the first to testify -- never quite identical to the time before.

This morning, I was racing through my routines, headed for an early meeting at work. I almost forgot my lunch, which was to be leftovers from last night's meal, but at the last moment before dashing out the door, I remembered it.

Had I been better organized, I would have slipped the Tupperware containing this food into a bag, but instead I balanced it precariously on top of a book containing algorithms and a newspaper wrapped in plastic, as I walked the block to where I'd parked my car last night after midnight.

As I neared the car, which was parked headfirst at an angle, I veered out into the street to angle in toward its trunk. As I did so, a young woman emerged from her apartment and started hustling down the sidewalk on her way to work. She was a pretty young woman, and I called out, in my newly hyper-friendly way, "Good morning!"

I'm not sure why I have become so hyper-friendly this summer, but talking to strangers seems to be my new habit. There's hardly anyone that if you smile and say hi won't return the favor. But this woman did more than that. She stopped, looked at what I was carrying, and backed up to her apartment door. "You reminded me I forgot my lunch!"

She rushed back upstairs, yelling "thanks" behind her. I drove south to my office and a few minutes ago I finished those leftovers, while someone, somewhere is eating her leftovers as well. Do you see? Buzz Buzz Buzz. Had I not arrived at that precise spot at that precise moment, balancing my Tupperware container awkwardly while being my hyper-friendly self to a passerby, she would have had to buy her lunch today.

That's it. A rather simple little story, unless you consider the math behind it all.

LINKS:

• Ukraine's Zelensky meeting with Pope Francis in Rome (BBC)

• Russian troops fall back to ‘defensive positions’ near Bakhmut (Guardian)

• Ukraine Will Invade Russia and Capture Territory From Putin—Igor Girkin (Newsweek)

• Turkey’s momentous election (Reuters)

• Border Is Calm as Crowds Cross and Biden Administration Fights Court Ruling (NYT)

• Republicans, Democrats Making Progress in Debt-Limit Talks, Yellen Says (WSJ)

• Lyft CEO Says Company ‘Open to Offers,’ But Not Pursuing a Sale (Bloomberg)

• Twitter’s New CEO, Linda Yaccarino, Has a Fearsome To-Do List (Wired)

• Businesses Seek Out ChatGPT-Tech for Searching and Analyzing Their Own Data (WSJ)

• AI-powered drones: Can anything stop a global AI arms race? (CNN)

• AI Can Be Both Accurate and Transparent (HBR)

• China Is in the AI Game. How Tech Giants Will Have to Play by Beijing’s Rules. (Barron’s)

• Israel, Islamic Jihad signal no Gaza truce soon (Reuters)

• Why Dad’s Side of the Family Tends to Miss Out — Many people have stronger bonds with their maternal relatives. Why? (Atlantic)

• Amid loneliness epidemic, readers share stories of struggle and serenity (WP)

• Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon falls 68% in April, first major drop under Lula (Reuters)

• Sleepover Guests Get Story Straight On What Time They Went To Bed (The Onion)