Jan 16, 2021

Freaks, Signal and Noise

“Certain years are so eventful they are regarded as pivotal in history,” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, recently wrote. He predicted that 2020 will join that list and cited three other historical years as examples. What were those other years?

(You can find the answer at the end of this letter)

Speaking of history, we find it littered with these freaks, who caused extreme pain to others. Alexander, Caligula, Hitler, etc. What twenty year old wakes up in the morning and decides to go on a spree to terrorize, maim, and kill complete strangers who live 3,000 miles away? Alexander did exactly that. Caligula got off to a slower start in his climb to insanity. When he got there, boy, was he unhinged. Once, he had an entire section of the audience thrown into the arena to be eaten by wild beasts, much like what happens on Twitter. Adolf Hitler, of course, needs no introduction.

These freaks were self-absorbed. They were insatiably cruel. They were liars. They were charismatic, which allowed them to wield power. Alexander believed that he was Achilles reincarnated. Textbooks eulogize him as a classical hero, and rewarded him with “the Great” suffix. Caligula insisted on being addressed as Jupiter. A large, unruly group of Rome’s citizens cheered his vow to make Rome great again. A member of Hitler Youth wrote, “We erupted into a frenzy of nationalistic pride that bordered on hysteria. For minutes on end, we shouted at the top of our lungs, with tears streaming down our faces: Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil! From that moment on, I belonged to Adolf Hitler, body and soul.”

Sound like anyone we know? Which leads me to Trump. He was impeached today. In a week, he’ll be gone from office. We need to make sure that he stays gone, which is what the impeachment is all about. There is really nothing left to either imagination or debate. Trump has made even a serious thing as impeachment a routine affair by getting impeached twice in 4 years. If he had gotten another term, he’d have gone 4 for 4.

With pressure mounting, and rising likelihood of being disbarred from holding office, Trump released a video this week, asking the proud boys to avoid violence during the inauguration. After having yelled “Fire” in a crowded cinema hall, Trump tried to draw our attention to a soul-stirring movie called America on the screen. I’m convinced that this man will do anything to get his Twitter account back.

Thoughts have been expressed on the January 6 US Capitol attack. None more profound than Susan Collins’ epiphany on hearing the mob storm through the corridors. Collins is a Senator from Maine. She thought to herself, “It must be the Iranians attacking.” I’m not making this up. She said it herself. She heard a bunch of guys running amok in the corridors and her first thought was, “It must be the Iranians attacking.” Seems logical. (insert sarcasm emoji here)

I’ve read more details about the horned, shirtless man who broke into the US Capitol last week. His name is Jake Angeli. I also hear that the poor lamb is anxious about going to jail because they don’t serve organic food there. Let’s pause here to reflect on the fact that I typed these words, you read them, and they are true.

More coronavirus variants have been spotted in the wild, by which I mean the United Kingdom. The Chinese government has assured us that we have nothing to worry about. As Sun Tzu put it, “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

All in all, we seem to be at a critical juncture in America and the world, as Biden takes office. If you’re, by any chance, a Hobbit, who has found a mysterious looking ring, please throw it into the nearest volcano right away.

There’s an exodus from Whatsapp to Signal underway. This is driven by privacy concerns caused by data sharing between Whatsapp and Facebook. Elon Musk, the Delphi Oracle of our times, weighed in with a two-word tweet, “Use Signal.” I find it intriguing that we believe that our data is valuable. A Silicon Valley wag said, “If you’re not paying, you are the product.” True as that may be, I’m glad someone thinks that I’m a product of value, especially when there’s no evidence of it. In any case, there appears to be a more peaceful transfer of power afoot from Whatsapp to Signal than from Trump to Biden.

How would you feel if you had only two password tries left to retrieve $225 million from your account? After eight failed attempts, Stefan Thomas from San Francisco lies awake at night, wracking his brains over what the password to his Bitcoin stash could be. Two more fails will lock his treasure forever, out of anyone’s reach. My suggestion, Stefan: sell your remaining 2 tries to a professional hacker for whatever you can get (I’m thinking, $100k) and move on.

In the meanwhile, Nidhi Razdan, a well known news anchor on one of India’s largest news channels, is scratching her head after being duped into believing that she had an offer from Harvard University to teach journalism. It took her over six months to wise up to 1) she was never a journalist, investigating even basics is not her forte and 2) Harvard does not have a school of journalism. I’ll bet this makes Rajdeep Sardesai, another prominent Indian news anchor, wonder if an offer to become the next CEO of Google is for real. RIP Indian ‘journalism.’

On the personal front, things in California continue to be in a hunker-down mode, with strict and indefinite stay-at-home orders, against a backdrop of escalating Covid-19 cases and fatalities. My company has designated ~80% of us as “edge workers,” which means that folks like me, who have been categorized thus, will no longer have an assigned office to return to, when we are able to do so. This mirrors similar decisions by other Silicon Valley companies.

Work from home has been a staple in the tech industry for a while. Most tech workers, in pre-Covid times, typically spent 2-3 days a week in the office. A push towards 2-3 days a month seems extreme. I think we’ll be back to some reasonable medium in 2-3 years. I love the flexibility and not-flying-for-business-meetings parts that this new working model has brought. But I miss the inconsequential water cooler conversations, and realize how important they were to my sense of well-being. This year, I look forward to staying a homebound introvert, who dines out, catches up with a small group of friends once a month, goes to a show or a concert every so often, and travels twice or thrice a year for fun.

The answer is: 1865, 1945 and 1968. The American Civil War ended in 1865. World War 2 ended in 1945. And 1968 was a year of “deep generational fissures,” as Baquet wrote, with large protests in the US and Europe, as well as the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. It was also the year I was born.

You’ll be happy to hear that The Vaccine now has 67 subscribers, as I write this. As always, stay safe and have a great week ahead!