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Friday: school, FF
May. 3rd, 2024 11:00 pmA. had two classes and only one homework cafe and things started early for her for a Friday: 10:30. But she got out at 2:30, so there’s that.
I walked with M.
I had a lovely phone chat with K.
I did FF.
FF was a little weird. J. remembered me talking about trying to plan rail travel. When I was talking about rail travel somewhat recently, what I was discovering was that rail travel is kind of impossible. Partly that has to do with available routes and schedules. Pricing is also a deterrent, because it is always clear that it’s cheaper and faster to fly or drive than to take the train. I’m not sure if A. will be able to sleep on the train at all, which is also a bit terrifying, so we first have to do a single nighter before committing to anything longer.
Finally, there is the food problem. That’s what killed train travel for me the last time I looked, and honestly, it’ll be a big problem for J., too, bigger than I think he realizes, but I could be wrong about that. A lot would come down to what Amtrak does to accommodate special needs.
Anyway, he’d remembered that I talked about it but forgot that I had concluded it was impossible. We walked through the two routes out of Seattle (LA or Chicago). He was thinking San Diego, which would require switching to a different train. Sticker shock didn’t seem to get to him too much, even with the probably-have-to-get-one-roommette-per-person issue. I have no idea if he’ll do it. I asked if there was a water cruise up and down the coast (there are, but I’m not sure if there are any in the summer, when he would want to do that with the kids). He was really opposed to the cruise idea (even tho he described the train as a land cruise), and so was H. and they landed on norovirus by way of explanation. I was a little surprised, because the cruise industry had basically fixed their norovirus problems pre-pandemic, and I hadn’t seen any major backsliding. The bad recent norovirus outbreak involved a “marquee” at a spring festival in Stuttgart (I think that’s a tent restaurant but I’m not sure: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68903481
I didn’t mention the German thing; I said that if you’re that worried about norovirus on a boat, you should be worried about it on planes, in airports, on trains, etc. They were adamant that boats were worse because everyone gets it / significant fractions get it. And I’m like, lol, no 3% in the recent bad outbreak. This made everyone angry at me and they asked to drop the topic. Fine with me.
The topic I _was_ interested in is a large, amorphous visualization of the future issue around transitioning from paper-to-digital especially in education, and transitioning from too-many-workers to not-enough-workers, and from not-enough-goods to too-many-goods, and the puzzle of high end chip demand for AI and/or crypto, and how that might develop over time. There are some adjacent issues around regulation that made a lot of sense in a world in which slowing stuff down was helpful, but is now probably less of a beneficial trade-off (so it will at least have to evolve). That’s kind of, What Does a Lean/Agile Economy Look Like?
Interesting stuff.
I walked with M.
I had a lovely phone chat with K.
I did FF.
FF was a little weird. J. remembered me talking about trying to plan rail travel. When I was talking about rail travel somewhat recently, what I was discovering was that rail travel is kind of impossible. Partly that has to do with available routes and schedules. Pricing is also a deterrent, because it is always clear that it’s cheaper and faster to fly or drive than to take the train. I’m not sure if A. will be able to sleep on the train at all, which is also a bit terrifying, so we first have to do a single nighter before committing to anything longer.
Finally, there is the food problem. That’s what killed train travel for me the last time I looked, and honestly, it’ll be a big problem for J., too, bigger than I think he realizes, but I could be wrong about that. A lot would come down to what Amtrak does to accommodate special needs.
Anyway, he’d remembered that I talked about it but forgot that I had concluded it was impossible. We walked through the two routes out of Seattle (LA or Chicago). He was thinking San Diego, which would require switching to a different train. Sticker shock didn’t seem to get to him too much, even with the probably-have-to-get-one-roommette-per-person issue. I have no idea if he’ll do it. I asked if there was a water cruise up and down the coast (there are, but I’m not sure if there are any in the summer, when he would want to do that with the kids). He was really opposed to the cruise idea (even tho he described the train as a land cruise), and so was H. and they landed on norovirus by way of explanation. I was a little surprised, because the cruise industry had basically fixed their norovirus problems pre-pandemic, and I hadn’t seen any major backsliding. The bad recent norovirus outbreak involved a “marquee” at a spring festival in Stuttgart (I think that’s a tent restaurant but I’m not sure: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68903481
I didn’t mention the German thing; I said that if you’re that worried about norovirus on a boat, you should be worried about it on planes, in airports, on trains, etc. They were adamant that boats were worse because everyone gets it / significant fractions get it. And I’m like, lol, no 3% in the recent bad outbreak. This made everyone angry at me and they asked to drop the topic. Fine with me.
The topic I _was_ interested in is a large, amorphous visualization of the future issue around transitioning from paper-to-digital especially in education, and transitioning from too-many-workers to not-enough-workers, and from not-enough-goods to too-many-goods, and the puzzle of high end chip demand for AI and/or crypto, and how that might develop over time. There are some adjacent issues around regulation that made a lot of sense in a world in which slowing stuff down was helpful, but is now probably less of a beneficial trade-off (so it will at least have to evolve). That’s kind of, What Does a Lean/Agile Economy Look Like?
Interesting stuff.