It’s been one whole year as a homeowner and I couldn’t be happier!
1 Year a Homeowner
Blog
Quitting Social Media
Why?
I made a Facebook account when I was 13, I think it was for some school project. Which is strange because the app wasn’t even around for that long at that point, less than 5 years. I made a Twitter when I was 15, and an Instagram at 16. Snapchat at 17. Now nearing 25, I no longer desire an online presence in that way.
Back then I cared a lot more about what people thought of me. I was young, naive, and wishing to fit in. These apps offered a way to socialize from afar, I wouldn’t need to talk with people or hang out with anyone. My ‘friends’ knew I was cool or funny because I would post a cool or funny post every once in a while. I’ve since changed a lot.
In the past three years I posted on average 2 photos a year, on Instagram which was my favorite of all of them, as I do really enjoy photography. All other applications have laid completely dormant for the duration and more. I simply don’t use them to post, and when I do, I get no satisfaction from others seeing it.
Furthermore, I found myself mindlessly scrolling on each of the apps. Whenever I was bored or taking a shit I would open Insta, look at all the new stuff, open Facebook and do the same, and so on down the line. I found myself numbing my ass on occasion because I had gotten sucked into some endless, pointless scrolling. I don’t want a numb ass, and I certainly don’t want a numb brain. Social media was numbing my brain.
So I deleted it all, actually deleted, no deactivation, straight deletion. And you know what, I could tell the difference immediately. I cried with a sense of relief. I had so simply removed such a negative dependence in my life. By removing myself from this negative externality, I gained back a part of me.
Trepidations
It took a little convincing, I won’t lie. I dwelled on this thought for months. My main objections were three fold:
- I wouldn’t be able to connect with people as easily.
- I wouldn’t get to share/document my life.
- I would lose my rights to @jamescaud.
It took a while for me to reject these pushback points as frivolous fears. But with careful examination, I was able to overcome them with logic and understanding.
First, I don’t really care about all my ‘friends’ on social media. I really don’t. I would use Facebook’s automated birthday notifications to delete people year round, so obviously I don’t really care about all of them. There are a few people I will miss seeing content from, but if I’m being frank, I probably won’t notice. As far as people trying to get into contact with me or vice versa, it’s not like I’ll forget their name, and the internet isn’t going anywhere, so I’m sure they’ll find me or I’ll find them.
Second, I do enjoy sharing. I don’t care if people see it, I mostly enjoy documenting my life as I go through it. Like an internet diary, a blog. Hey what do you know, I have a blog. A neglected blog, granted, but a blog none the less. With social media gone, I do expect to increase my utility of this app. It’s more personalized, and I get to share everything in one place; photos, videos, ideas. And look, a post in 2020 already, not bad! speaking of 2020, jesus fucking christ
Third, and probably the hardest to let go, @jamescaud has now been retired on all platforms except LinkedIn. I didn’t really count that as social media, but hopefully someday i can get rid of that too. This was really hard for me, jamescaud is my brand. And giving up something you have fought hard to solidify is not easy. But at the end of the day, I am jamescaud, these accounts aren’t me, they just describe. Myself and my brand live on through this website and through me. So if someone else comes along and wants to be jamescaud on facebook, I’ll have to tell them they weren’t the first to think of that cool name haha.
So they are gone now. I’ll see you out there in the world. If you ever think of me, just know I’m doing alright, and that I’m happier now.
NTS: Wrapping up 2019
A Year Without Posting
Okay, I know, I’m a piece of shit. I legit didn’t post anything all year long. Hell, the last thing I put up here was mid 2018, so it’s been way longer than just a year. I want to give you an update on where I’m at, and let myself indulge in a bit of self-love through this Note To Self.
Pittsburgh, PA
First and foremost, the biggest thing that happened in my life since last posting is my big move.
I realized only 10 months into my job in San Francisco that there was no future for me there. As much as I loved the city, it was completely unaffordable. Not to mention so many of my hobbies were so difficult to exercise, like hiking and backpacking. I started getting sick of all the concrete.
My company has its main office in Pittsburgh, and when I heard from my boss that ATG would keep my salary the same if I moved, I couldn’t leave town quick enough. I left my apartment, packed my truck to the brim with all the shit I owned, and drove. 2 days and nearly 3,000 miles later, I arrive in PGH, Julia in tow.
With no place lined up, I stayed in an AirBNB for a week to get my bearings, and started looking for an apartment. A fellow SF coworker was thinking of making the move as well, and we decided to try and find a place for us both to share. Going from a nearly $2,000 ~300 square foot apartment in the Tenderloin to a $500 ~1,000 square foot row home 5mins from work; this already was looking like a great idea. I had a roommate, which wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but we maintained civility up until the last month. I could not have been more fortunate to find such a polite and respectful roommate in Oliver, and I’m thoroughly grateful for his cooperation with my often not-so-stable self.
Julia
Julia helped me move in, set up my life in a new place, and begin a new journey. Little did I know at the time, but our journey together was near its end. What a tremendous rollercoaster of a relationship. We were not right for each other, and we knew it. We fought, we wept, we even tried breaking up, just to fall back in love after a week long vacation we had planned together. She offered me so much love and affection, and I soaked it right up. I loved her more than I loved myself. Therein lies the crux. I had fallen into the same mistake as before. I never learned that you can’t have a healthy relationship if you don’t first love yourself.
I neglected time, neglected myself, and the relationship deteriorated into only hardship, so we split. The breakup still weighs a bit heavy on my mind. I really couldn’t believe I had made the same exact mistake as I had with Michele. Only this time was going to be different. I had to learn to love myself, and that had to start with my body.
Biking
I had been eying an abandoned bike in my company’s bike shed for many months preceding the split. The day after, I decided to steal it. I told myself that if anyone came asking, I would glady hand it back over. I rode it everyday, tuned it up, and a few weeks later that someone came asking haha. I returned my stolen good and immediately bought a new, way better bike. I was addicted.
I’d bike 20-30miles a day, honestly fueled by my incendiary self hatred. But it also brought me great joy. I hadn’t rode a bike since I was a young teen, and I must have forgotten how much I loved it. I didn’t stop skating entirely, but I now most definitely favor the pedals to the push.
With a better diet, and the insane miles I was putting in, I ended up losing nearly 30 pounds 190->160. Not to mention how strong I was getting. I rode on streets and bike paths, but by far my favorite rides were on gravel and dirt. I bought bags that strapped to the bike and I soon found myself riding 100s of miles into the wilderness to experience my newfound love: bikepacking.
When I wasn’t out riding in the forests of the northern Appalachian I joined a few group rides in PGH. That’s where I got a bit of a taste of racing, and oh man was I hooked. I signed up for two races, one street then one gravel. Just before the road race I got in a horrific accident where I was destroyed by some jackass motorist. I missed that race, but I healed and was able to ride in the other. Funny story about that race, I also crashed. Instead of breaking myself however, I broke my bike. I got a DNF, and had to get driven to the finish line. What I found when I got there were all the top riders who had already finished. As I bandaged myself I marveled at their strength and vowed that I would finish next year. Someday I will be in contention, but in the meantime, I keep riding.
Home Ownership
As my rental lease was nearing completion, 2 months remained, Oliver and I had a falling out, and I knew it was time for me to move on. I’d been saving up to purchase a home, but wasn’t exactly expecting to be in the predicament I found myself in. I only had a little over a month and a half to find a realtor, tour properties, find a place, put down an offer, than go through the motions of purchase. It was no easy feat, but I knew what I wanted. After touring about 5 houses I found the right place. The perfect size for me, beautifully remodeled, large yard for a garden, fantastic neighborhood, great views, garage for working on my bike, driveway and plenty of parking for my truck, adjacency to the Three Rivers bike trail that takes me to work in 20min, and so many other fantastic pros.
The purchase was a tad stressful, but I’m happy I got the place for so cheap (coupled with a ridiculously low interest rate on my mortgage). I should have it completely paid off in about 6 years! It’s surreal honestly. I’ve found so much enjoyment in fixing up the property, whether it is fixing a wall leak in my shower, converting electrical outlets and panel work, repointing my brick facade, clearing out my jungle of a back yard, or general handy work around the house. I love home ownership, I have the power to do just about whatever the hell I want. Without a doubt, I can see myself living here for a decade. The only thing stopping me is the potential wife and kids down the road. But now that I have worked on this house, and learned so much about what it takes to make a home, I can see myself picking up a few more properties and renting them out. We will see, I kinda also want to build a cabin in the woods. Matter of fact, that sounds way more fun, we’ll see.
Closing
Welp, that’s just about everything I wanna share for now. I have a bunch of biking/house vids that I will upload at some point. Hopefully 2020 will be a year of more posting. Until then, I love you James, keep up the great work. Proud of you.
Homelessness and Gentrification
Charge:
Homelessness is not a choice. There may be a small amount of people who experience homelessness and enjoy it, but the overwhelming majority are suffering. After university I lived out of my truck as I wandered the nation, it was part necessity, part desire — a desire to see and understand the people of my nation, how they live, what they do, and how they think. While out, I experienced some of the common difficulties faced while homeless. Talking to homeless people in parks, libraries or on the streets of San Francisco has opened my eyes to one of the biggest social atrocities affecting our nation: the fundamental lack of a holistic support system for our poorest and most vulnerable citizens.
I’ve been putting off writing this post for so long because of the way it makes me feel. Homelessness is one of the most heart-wrenching, unethical side-effects of wealth inequality. Every time I read more about it, or talk to somebody on the street, I feel a heavy societal guilt. Someday I will do a formal rant on the centuries-old failures of greed and capitalism, but first I need to pay my respects to our neglected communities.
There are two lines of questioning that get asked when I tell people I’m researching homelessness. The first, always asked by non-homeless, starts, “How did they get there?” The second, always asked by homeless people yet rarely by housed, sounds like, “How do we fix it?” I’ll go ahead and answer both in this post. But for future reference, one of those questions is far more important.
Definitions and Statistics:
Homelessness is best defined as the state of an individual without permanent housing who may live on the streets; stay in a shelter, mission, single room occupancy facilities, abandoned building or vehicle; or in any other unstable or non-permanent situation. [Section 330 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C., 254b)]
Gentrification is a small cause of homelessness I want to touch on because I am unwillingly an accomplice to it in San Francisco. I won’t harp on it too much in this post, but know that it’s a whole ‘nother beast in itself. Here’s the definition: “the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents.” [Merriam-Webster]
Chronic
- “Persons most like the stereotyped profile of the “skid-row” homeless, who are likely to be entrenched in the shelter system and for whom shelters are more like long-term housing rather than an emergency arrangement. These individuals are likely to be older, and consist of the “hard-core unemployed”, often suffering from disabilities and substance abuse problems. Yet such persons represent a far smaller proportion of the population compared to the transitionally homeless.”
Transitional
- “Transitionally homeless individuals generally enter the shelter system for only one stay and for a short period. Such persons are likely to be younger, are probably recent members of the precariously housed population and have become homeless because of some catastrophic event, and have been forced to spend a short time in a homeless shelter before making a transition into more stable housing. Over time, transitionally homeless individuals will account for the majority of persons experiencing homelessness given their higher rate of turnover.”
Episodic
- “Those who frequently shuttle in and out of homelessness are known as episodically homeless. They are most likely to be young, but unlike those in transitional homelessness, episodically homeless individuals often are chronically unemployed and experience medical, mental health, and substance abuse problems.”
Size of Homeless Community:
Getting an understanding of the size of this community is difficult because point-in-time counts really don’t capture all stages of homelessness. Individuals hiding away in sub-optimal living spaces like cars can easily be missed. The department of Housing and Urban Development releases a point-in-time count each year for most urban municipalities by walking the streets and accessing shelter numbers. This year was the first year since the housing crash that homelessness rose. The report said 554,000 people were without permanent or adequate residence on a night in January 2017.
However, this count does not show the entire picture. In order to get a more appropriate number, some estimates must be made. From my research I’ve found most sources referencing a number from 1.7 million to 3.5 million. This is the total number of people who experience any stage of homelessness at some time throughout the year. That’s 1% of our entire population. Even though 1% sounds like a small number, I urge you once again to realize the insurmountable suffering endured by these 3,500,000 American human beings. Then, realize that you will probably never understand their immense pain. Then remember that I’m only talking about Americans. Homelessness is not a uniquely American phenomenon.
Overall, the United States ranks fine compared to other civilized nations, but that is for two reasons. First, many other European nations are accepting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees that have nowhere else to go because they own nothing. Second, the number we report is bogus. Regardless of the numbers, it’s obvious that we are experiencing a homelessness crisis in America. The main cause for this crisis is due to the way we have historically approached the issue: through a failed plan called homelessness management — more on this later.
Demographics of Homeless Community:
To get a picture of the different types of people experiencing homelessness, I’m going to run through the percentages.
Homelessness disproportionately affects men. Overall, sheltered and unsheltered, men account for 61% of the homeless population. Women account for 29% and less than 1% identify as LGBTQ+. The total unsheltered ratio is even more skewed with 71% being male.
The gender ratio has always been heavier on the male side, but the ratio that has changed recently is the number of young people on the street. In the most recent point-in-time survey it was found out that 33% of homeless people are experiencing homelessness as a family. Young people account for approximately 30% of the homeless population, with 20% aged 0-18 and 10% aged 18-24. These statistics have never been this bad in all of American history; not even the Great Depression matches this unprecedented amount of homeless youth.
More saddening statistics are that 9-13% of the total homeless population are veterans, which has increased in the last few years. Around 25% of homeless are affected by at least one severe mental illness. 38% are dependent on alcohol and 26% addicted to at least one hard drug.
Finally, where are the largest populations of homeless located? Overall, two states stand out the most. California with 26% of the total homeless population and New York with 16%. But there are three main urban localities that account for those numbers: New York City, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
How did they get there?
This video does an incredible job in quickly highlighting the common ways individuals find themselves entrenched in homelessness. There are many avenues, but the most common are poverty and lack of affordable housing.
Poverty
In 2016, nearly 13% of Americans lived below the poverty line. Growing income inequality and debt have made life difficult for many Americans. It’s no surprise that anybody can fall into homelessness when 62% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings account. For those people, living paycheck to paycheck is an unfortunate fact of life. And when you are in that circumstance, costly emergencies, the loss of a job, or the loss of a spouse could spell disaster. Even though unemployment is at its lowest in 18 years at only 3.9%, the quality of life hasn’t really changed. Jobs simply aren’t paying enough. Graduates are finding themselves marginalized and underemployed at a staggering rate. It’s not just young people either, in upwards of 46% of seniors are dependent on social security to pay 90% of their expenses. Anyone is susceptible to homelessness, it just takes one crisis to lose all of your money and hope. Hell, getting a parking ticket, or your car towed can mean you miss your next month’s rent, putting you in danger of eviction.
Affordable Housing
In places like San Francisco and New York City, the two most expensive cities to live in America, affordable and available housing is obviously in short supply. But since the housing crash in 2007, it’s been more than just the urban areas that have been feeling the effect. Renters are at an all time high, and over 25% of households are paying over 50% of their income to housing. The Department of Housing and Urban Development states: families with only one full-time worker making minimum wage can’t afford rent for a two-bedroom market-priced apartment anywhere in the country. Ever since the Reagan administration and the defunding of the Housing and Urban Development department, subsidized contracts to construct and maintain public housing have nearly vanished. And there is no sign of this changing soon.
This is where gentrification comes into play. Large urban areas like the San Francisco Bay Area are booming with highly lucrative industries, mostly due to consistent advancements in technology. These industries attract highly skilled workers from all over the world, and they expect to be paid well for their qualifications. Wealthy landowners and real estate corporations will recognize this influx of highly paid workers and move to revitalize their properties and eventually raise rents. This process forces out long standing residents who may already be living in poverty and cannot afford to pay the new rates. I live in a studio apartment in arguably the roughest district in the city, and the rent is $1,850 a month. You can’t find a place for any less than $1,700 if you tried. Families whose income is less than $60,000 a year (which is the national median) would be paying half of their income just to have a place to stay. This growth is unsustainable, and we are heading towards an inflation disaster. There is no reason for all these companies to be in the same 100 mile radius, and soon I expect to see a max exodus.
Social System Failures
Other factors play a key role in the rise of the homelessness epidemic. Deinstitutionalisation in the late 20th century, an abundance of foster care children with poor, inadequate or lacking families, a criminal justice system which incarcerates and releases with no continued support, the proliferation of cheap and highly addictive street drugs like crack cocaine and meth, veterans returning home from war without adequate support, and the rising costs of health care all contribute to this intractable problem.
One of the most frustrating things I hear when talking to housed individuals is, “Why can’t they just get off their ass and get a job?” As if they know anything about the difficulties these people face. How is someone expected to get a job when they don’t have access to a shower, clean clothes or any modern amenities? Homeless people are more worried about getting robbed, beaten or murdered than the format of their resume. They have to think about whether or not this alcove in a rat infested alleyway is going to provide enough shelter from the elements, not to mention getting something to eat that day, or finding a place to drink clean water and use the restroom.
You can’t even easily qualify for state/federal aid if you don’t have an address to receive it at. The “system” we have in place to support homeless individuals is broken, and actually perpetuates the problem.
How do we fix it?
Homelessness management is a methodology for housing these vulnerable neighbors that enlists temporary shelter housing, coupled with publicly funded hospitals and prisons to get these people off the streets and out of danger every night. And it’s costing the American taxpayer a fortune. Not only that, but it’s not working. Billions of dollars have been spent thanks to the McKinney-Vento grants to aid these support centers, but the numbers haven’t changed. Why? Because there isn’t motivation to create a holistic support system that takes into account all the difficulties faced by these people. We bucket funding into nodes in the network, but nobody seems to realize that in order to make change they need to work together.
A blog post similar to this one by Sam Davis of UC Berkeley highlights this flawed methodology and known working alternatives. The one thing that absolutely improves the quality of life for these individuals is a notion called ‘housing first’. The idea is: in order for progress to be made in a homeless person’s life, their main struggles need to be provided for. As I mentioned earlier, homeless people are not worried about going to the doctor or getting sober. Their primary concern on a day-to-day basis is where can they get food, water, shelter and safety. Their lives are exclusively survival-based. And until they have a reliable source for the necessities of life, they can’t get any better.
Supportive Housing
Instead of spending loads of money on contracted services that have no communication with one another, and only dedicate small portions of funding to the actual housing of these people, we should fund and develop supportive housing. Supportive housing is the development of subsidized permanent residences where individuals can not only live, but have easy access to the help they need. Within the residence there would be a point of contact who would be similar to a resident adviser on college dorms. This person or group would work with the residents and make sure they are seeking the right help and following up on their plan to well-being. The housing would connect people with the proper health services, mental health services, drug counselling, job training, and anything else these people might need.
This approach is designed to cater to the individual experiencing homelessness, and their progress could be tracked and managed by the support group at the housing facility. One note that Sam brings up in his post is that we don’t want these to feel institutional. Many of these individuals suffering don’t want to feel homogenized and labeled. Even more so, they should feel integrated in the greater community. This requires a change in mindset among citizens, something that definitely won’t happen overnight.
Temporary Housing
Even if the federal government stepped up their game and orchestrated these programs on a grand scale across the nation, there would still be a delay of support. We need not solely focus on the best long-term approach, but also improve our current temporary support network. By building out better shelters, having individuals working to manage the support these people are getting, and continuing a societal campaign to change the mindset of current residents in these neighborhoods, we can provide a structured support system in the meantime. Our current homeless management system is barely a system at all. If we integrated some of the services the people and taxpayers would be benefited greatly. So until affordable housing projects are publicly funded on the federal level again, these band-aid solutions can actually do some good.
Alternative housing ideas such as encampments, shipping crates, and tiny homes should not be ruled out of consideration either. Localities should spend time and resources finding places within their respective borders to provide both long-term and temporary housing improvements. This plan in general can be replicated in all municipalities, but the approach needs to be catered towards the land and space available, environmental considerations, and public approval. This is where all of us come in.
What can you do about it?
The problem of homelessness isn’t going away any time soon. As we see our economy continue to drive more and more people into dire circumstances, and less and less is done to aid our poorest citizens, it’s obvious this problem isn’t going away. So what can any one person do to affect change? It’s a hard question to answer.
For starters, if you are in a position to donate to some of these organizations working tirelessly to alleviate the difficulties faced by homeless people, please do: National Coalition for the Homeless, National Alliance to End Homelessness, or find a center near you to support. Many of the citations are credited to them, and not only do they help homeless assertive networks, but they all do good work advocating for policy change in government.
Another way to help is by donating your time. Shelters across the nation are in need of temporary and continued volunteer service and would gladly take any help they can get. This is especially important for my next point.
Stop ignoring these people. Each person you see on the street is another human being. The idea that they probably got themselves into this situation and should be left alone to figure out how to get out of it is morally horrific and logistically absurd. We as a society need to to hold ourselves collectively responsible for getting these people the help they deserve. In many developed nations across the world, each citizen is allotted basic human rights such as a shelter, health care, and education. It’s not communism, it’s basic respect for the well-being of our fellow human beings. Our nation is extremely wealthy and we still can’t afford that common respect for humanity. We should be smarter about how we spend our time, money and effort, and that starts with the individual.
When you see a homeless person on the street, whether they are asking for money, shooting up heroin, or just laying down on the sidewalk, give them the common decency of eye contact. Look at them, see their pain, and respect their humanity. If you can only do that, you have no idea the effect it will have on them and yourself. Just don’t look away. If after a while you can muster the strength to have a conversation with some of them, please do. You shouldn’t be afraid of homeless people any more than anyone else. Nobody deserves to feel ignored, alone, and left to rot.
If we can all just do this, we will start to love these people and care for their well-being. We will become upset, not at them, but at the fact that nobody in power is doing anything about it. And our collective outrage at the failure of our current system will drive political change. Then maybe, with considerate legislation and well managed programs, we can end homelessness once and for all.
Life/Blog Update
I’m still alive!
Things have changed though, many, many things. I’ve moved into an apartment in San Francisco, started work for Uber ATG, and fell in love with Julia. Just to name a few. These changes mark the beginning of a new chapter of my life: phase two of my crazy plan to change the world. It feels good to transition into the next stage of my life, yet I know with change comes challenge. During the transition I have absolutely neglected my blog. I apologize for the lack of posts in the recent months. Adjusting to a new habitat is a long and arduous process for me. Luckily, as I count my third month of moving to San Francisco I have decidedly settled in and staring getting in a routine. There are still a few adjustments I need to make to my day-to-day, like going to the gym consistently, but over all I am comfortable. Every morning I wake up excited to go to work and every evening I am excited to go home. Not to say I don’t love my work, I couldn’t be more in love, I just love working on me as well. Sadly though, I haven’t been spending my end of days very wisely these past few months. Going forward I plan on changing that. I will have days dedicated to certain goals. Whether it’s researching about my potential PhD, reading about technology, or diving deep into a current ethical issue.
My goal is to be busy all day every day, doing productive work that I love. So expect to see a higher frequency of posts from me in the future!
The Geriatric Crisis, Assisted Suicide, and Euthanasia
Charge
America is facing a crisis unmet by any previous society. A crisis that is coming to fruition across the globe in many of the most highly developed nations. However, we as Americans are seemingly doing all that we can to make matters worse, whereas other nations have recognized the issue and are moving towards viable solutions. I’m coining this problem: the geriatric crisis. We as a society need to find pragmatic solutions to this appending bombshell of negative ethical consequence. In this post I highlight my ideas and propose both short term and long term solutions.
This topic has been at the forefront of my thought since arriving at my parents house. Both my maternal grandmother and paternal grandparents are apart of the original baby boom. They are struggling, and the support system we as a society have in place for them is grossly ill-equipped to deal with the majority of problems they face. It saddens me beyond comprehension the scale of suffering being felt by our elderly populous. We must do something about it.
Evidence of Crisis
As with every issue, research is important to understand and familiarize with the data. Along with statistics, I researched important microcosms of American society to appreciate the magnitude of the appending crisis. Below are stats and stories that damn our society and showcase unintentional cruelty.
Birth Rates, Death Rates, Life Expectancy, and Average Age
There are a few statistics America keeps on its citizens that are vital to understanding the state of our aging nation. These statistics are birth rates, death rates, life expectancy, and average age. There are many different names for these statistics, such as natality, crude birth/date rate, mortality rate, and other combination metrics such as rate of natural increase. Since throwing too many numbers at your face is not my intention, I will stick to speaking in generality and link the true statistics for further personal investigation. But trust me, the numbers aren’t pleasing.
Google has an awesome tool to visualize trends in each of these metrics and more, I highly recommend you check it out here. You can also compare nation and world populations.
The big picture is this: birth rates are going down, death rates are going down, average life expectancy is slightly going up, and average age is going up. This has tremendous implications on the effectiveness of the social welfare programs we have in place. More on this below.
The causes are many, but it’s obvious that better medicine and technology has given us a better capability to live longer, healthier lives. On the other side of the spectrum, birth rates could be decreasing due to a more steady involvement of women in the workplace. (thanks capitalism) Other things such as reliable birth control and economic highs and lows affect birth rates as well.
My main point for this subsection is that in the past we have had difficulties handling the aging populous, but never before has it been this big to be called a crisis. For an example look to the trends of imprisoned Americans.
Imprisoned Elderly
It is said that living a life behind bars ages you faster. By many approximations, those who have served considerable time in a state or federal penitentiary are mentally and physically ten years older than their birth date reads. This has caused a considerable amount of unforeseen difficulties that prisons have had to work around. If you’re down to ball your eyes out, I have a report or video you can check out.
As much as I’d like to critique the rotten judicial and criminal system/structure that often perpetrates racist ideologies, I’ll save that for another post. This problem of a growing elderly population in prison is a direct result of the movement in the 70’s towards a strong “tough on crime” stance. That coupled with insane sentencing minimums and a budding idiotic war on drugs placed America in the number one spot for percentage of citizens incarcerated amongst developed nations. Not to mention the ever present “for-profit” prisons.
This microcosm of American society can shed light on the crisis we are starting to face because it is supposedly ten years ahead. If you skipped out on the video or report let me fill you in on the conditions that these elderly are facing: they are abhorrent. Not only are many of them suffering from multiple ailments, most have no hope of ever being free. They will die behind bars, alone, afraid, and in incredible pain. Sadly, even if they are allowed back into society, many have no one to pick them up. They are doomed.
Many prisons have started to implement an inmate sourced support system where inmaes are paid measly amounts to care for and assist the aged through daily activities such as clothing, bathing, eating, and using the bathroom. These able individuals are their biggest advocates and many times their only friends.
But of course this isn’t just a social well-being problem, it also carries financial consequences. Taxpayers are paying for these individual’s medications and treatments, and the costs are staggering. Letting them out of prison only solves one of the problems. Unfortunately, they will be thrown into the just-as-broken welfare support system free citizens face. But how bad is it?
Lack of Support System
There are a few avenues of financial support available for the retired and aging population in America. Personal/family wealth, long-term privatized insurance, social security, and medicare. Most Americans don’t have enough saved to afford a full retirement. And not enough people are investing in long-term care insurance.
So most people are relying heavily on the government programs we have in place. Programs designed in an age where there were up to thirty workers paying taxes to cover one elderly. These systems have yet to experience nearly such an obstacle, one graph tells it all: The Population Pyramid.
This graph shows the percentage of total population per 5 year age group in 2018. To understand why these near century old programs are failing, you must examine the progression over time.
A steady shift towards an equilibrium of shared percentage is obvious, but our welfare programs are not the slightest prepared. The baby boom is the first tidal wave in the gif, and all of them are about to hit 65 and up. This will destroy the systems we have in place. There are now less than 3 workers to 1 beneficiary, social security needs extreme reform. Medicare needs a huge overhaul, for that I agree with my dude Bernie.
Even with perfect government welfare programs, there will be prolonged unnecessary suffering. Many old people at some point, whether they are terminally ill or fading fast, want to end their life. Yet their government forbids it, only 6 states and DC currently have death with dignity legislation. I believe that the laws already in place are useful, but could go a step further in the future. More on this later.
Long Term Fixes
The separation of long and short term fixes are based on the longevity of the solution. Some fixes could enable healthy and happy aging for all future generations, others simply alleviate some pressure right away. The difference does not however take into account the timeline for enacting policy of the sort. It’s safe to say that in our current state all policy decisions are going to be stifled with inaction and ignorance. As the issues become more and more pervasive the public will demand justice for their most deserving elder population. Here are the ways I see to solve this geriatric crisis.
Medicare and Social Security Re-hauls
My favorite president is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, without his leadership during a time of great instability we would be nowhere. He was one of the main reasons we exited WW2 as the top economic power, that and the fact we weren’t bombed to shit. His presidential cornerstone was the creation of social security. The Social Security Act was passed in 1935 as a main component of The New Deal. Many new deal policies failed miserably, but this one succeeded tremendously. It has been the most reliable government agency since inception, but it’s fundamental idea is only now becoming challenged beyond belief. It won’t make it to its 100th birthday.
I truly believe that it is time for a new, new deal. All these social issues I am constantly thinking about will be apart of it. But universal health coverage will be at the forefront. It’s frankly sad to see that we are the last developed nation to offer basic coverage. Just like holding on to the broken imperial unit system, we may never switch due to fear and cost concerns. America needs to go back to the days where they would take risks when it was the ethically right thing to do.
Now, there are a ton of changes that need to be made, and many more that could be changed. If I talked about them all I would bore you to death. Instead I will link you to some of the potential fixes. My grandma says young people need to pay more, I say we need to transition everyone to a single payer system that modifies benefits based on your age group. Another solution is providing a supplemental program to increase government earnings. The solution is NOT to get rid of it. But it is about time that seriously drastic changes be considered.
The agency will be continually failing on its payments in future years. So something needs to be done. Think we will ever have as progressive a congress?
Increased Incentives for Geriatricians
Medicare is strapped for cash, and they don’t pay recipients enough for good long term coverage. This is directly at odds with privatized insurance because of the doctors. Young students pursuing their M.D. don’t want to work on old people. It’s often considered unglamorous and unrewarding. Unrewarding both financially and mentally. Most people would intrinsically save a youth’s life over an elder’s if they had to chose. This is backed up with economical bias, geriatricians make less on average than any other profession requiring an M.D. Compared to a radiologist’s $473,000 average salary, a geriatrician’s $184,000 is shit. This is because Medicare is broke and private insurance is rich.
Not only are other areas of medicine far more lucrative, they are more often taught. During schooling many programs cycle the soon to be doctors through different areas of medicine to give them the opportunity to try things out and find what they like. Geriatrics is almost never a mandatory cycle. After all, schools want their students to go out and get high paying jobs so they can pay their way out of debt then pitch back earnings to their alma mater.
The need for geriatricians and geriatric nurses is outrageous.
“By 2030, the need will grow to an estimated 30,000 geriatricians. To reach this number, 1,200 geriatricians would need to be board-certified each year for the next 20 years. Twelve hundred may not seem like a huge number, but consider this: In 2010, only 75 medical residents entered geriatric fellowship programs across the United States, down from 112 in 2005, according to the American Geriatrics Society. The geriatrician is becoming an endangered specialty.”
Holy shit, we’re fucked, unless things change now. Start paying these doctors more, start mandating cycles in university, and remove the stigma of old lives being less important. Easy right? Nope, but otherwise we’re fucked. And when I say “we’re” I really mean your grandparents and parents. They will suffer insurmountable pains due to this lack of support personnel.
This is an area that needs more people sooner than we can get them. We need to incentivize retraining of doctors and recently unemployed to become geriatric doctors and nurses. This will provide the needed support for the geriatricians. Otherwise, suffering will ensue.
More Regulated Re-Population Schemes
The last long term solution is a bit more controversial in today’s social landscape. As shown earlier, the population will soon be equally spread amongst the age groups. This is a general trend towards an natural equilibrium. However, the graphs can’t predict the future. As we have seen in the past, people will have children for different reasons, and certain times have been dominated by intense breeding. These imbalances lead to ripples of population growth that challenge social welfare systems.
The best way to solve this problem is a more regulated re-population scheme. I’m not calling for eugenics, I just want the government to insure that another baby boom or baby drought doesn’t happen again. That could mean not going to war or it could mean actually regulating financial institutions to disallow another recession. I will leave eugenics and parental licensing for another post since that isn’t what this one is about. Just know that my opinion is that the government should not only track the population statistics, but actively encourage a steady re-population rate.
This steady rate will increase planning capabilities and insure the full payment of benefits to every citizen. The better we are at predicting the health of our population, the more prepared we are to support them.
Short Term Fixes
Suicide is a touchy subject. It is engulfed in negative connotations stemming mostly from religion. Nowadays it holds a direct link to mental health stability, and often drug/alcohol/gun abuse. After contemplating it myself and saving others from ledges I’ve developed a philosophy that is: Humans should have the right to choose how, when, and where they die. This post will talk primarily about the terminally ill and near death individuals whose deserve this option, but I firmly believe in availability to all citizens within reason.
Assisted Suicide
Assisted suicide, or more aptly called medically assisted dying, is currently legal in 6 states and D.C. The idea is simple, if a person is terminally ill or near death, they have the capability to sign a few papers and be prescribed a lethal dose of some barbiturate. Now, this is an obvious oversimplification. In reality there are waiting periods, multiple doctor approvals, and consent statements and requests. Needless to say, it’s not easy or quick. And only a few illnesses qualify per state.
I’ve already linked a few testimonials as to why this is morally righteous, but I have also experienced this first hand. These laws need to be widened to allow for more people to qualify. Too many people have to wait for their death when their body and mind have already given out. No person should have to face weeks, months, or years of pain because their government doesn’t think they qualify for a dignified death. We need to get over this “life at all costs” mentality, it’s often life-insensitive.
The will of humanity is great, if a person wants something badly enough, they will do whatever it takes to get it. One reason why Planned Parenthood is worth funding. This idea is also at play when it comes to the ending of one’s life. Whats worse, medically assisted death or suicide by cop? Pretty obvious answer I’d say. But what about the other major ways? Shooting yourself in the head? Drinking yourself to death? Or overdosing on some other drug? I think you’d be an idiot to say that anything other than assisted suicide is best or more moral. It surely is the least messy.
With all this being said, the requirements for request and verification are a gray area. And we haven’t had these laws around long enough for there to be conclusive evidence for the best practice. For now, not even enough people know about them, so education on options is more necessary.
Euthanasia
One major problem with assisted suicide is that it doesn’t cover individuals who are unable to grant consent. Say for instance your grandmother has dementia, perhaps caused by Alzheimer’s. She is unable to recognize you, and doesn’t even know her own name. With the current assisted suicide laws she can’t consent, therefore must lay to waste away until her time is up. This has enormous consequences for your family and most importantly her. She is gone, her life consists of waking up confused about where she is, forced feeding, then often medically induced sleep. Does that sound fun to you? It’s not. The only thing she wants is peace, but can’t express it because her mental capabilities have deteriorated so much. You want her to be at peace as well, but chances are, you have to let her suffer until natural death.
Pretty fucked up right? This is happening everywhere, and the moral repugnance is a stench that clouds America’s ethics. When your dog is 21, blind, and unable to stand, you put it down. It’s lived a great life and the last thing you want to do is force it to endure any further suffering. Why the fuck are humans any different? If anything, it’s more immoral for humans because they have lives of even greater value, and deserve more rights than the dog.
One way to offer these benefits without forcing loved-ones to make the hard decision is something like a do not resuscitate contract. As one gets older, it becomes more important to have a will drafted. If an individual wants to be cut short of life in the case they become unresponsive or terminally ill, they should have the capability to consent to a doctor beforehand in the will. This gives the power back to the individual and ensures the following of their wishes.
Potential Abuse
Most of the arguments against these treatment options focus on the potential abuse of insurance agencies or doctors. I’m less worried about doctors because they are almost always looking out for the best interests in their patients. What is definitely more scary is insurance companies pushing for a certain treatment or not. It’s important to keep in mind, that as long as we are a capitalist society, insurance companies are making money off of people’s faults and imperfections. If they stand to earn from a certain treatment and not others, they will coerce the buyer into choosing the more cost effective option.
This could mean a number of horrible things. First, these companies might attempt to withhold information on all treatment options and their timelines. (which is already happening) This means that they may put pressure on a person to start a treatment option without fully understanding all of the options. Second, they may limit coverage for certain treatments forcing poorer people to choose the option that would least negatively affect their family members. Thirdly, as seen with the explosion of opioid addiction in recent years, we can’t trust that pharmaceutical companies will not bribe doctors into over prescribing.
All this means that the government would have to eliminate edge cases and truly crack down on offenders. This should be coupled with a FDA overhaul in my opinion, but I’ll save that for another post. Most of the already existing policies have elements stating the pressure of an individual to make a decision of treatment vs. death be a felony. Regardless, the government needs to ensure the rights of the patient are not taken advantage of.
Closing
As I’m finishing writing this piece my grandfather has just passed away. His kidney’s were failing, he was entering dementia, and he decided to decline treatment. He was uncomfortable for weeks as he waited for his death. His wife, now alone, has lost nearly all her motor functions and memory. She also has declined treatment and is waiting for her turn to die. This is sad, not because death is scary or unfortunate. This is sad because they are forced to suffer until their bodies finally give up. They are citizens of Florida, a state without any dying with dignity policy.
If you haven’t experienced this sadness yet, you will. Death awaits all of us. We have no say in how we’re born, but we should at least have a say in how we die. We need to reform our social welfare landscape before the crisis financially cripples us.
Finally, I hope you consider how you want your end of life experience to be. Your perspective grants you empathy. And your empathy saves lives.
“Funny, the day you’re born, that’s really your death sentence.” – Donald Glover
Sexism, Racism, and Culturally Reinforced White Male Entitlement
Note: This is a very opinionated post. Research for this writing is mostly centered around reading other’s opinion pieces and historical storytelling, I’ll link throughout. I will attempt to convey my evidence and recommendations with all four of Aristotle’s modes of persuasion. As with many of my other posts this is specifically about the USA. These issues are felt worldwide, however different in their ways. Since I know this place the best, and it’s a prime example, we are going to use America.
Side Note: I have been super bust applying and interviewing with companies, which is why this post took so long to make. Hopefully the next one comes quicker.
Summary and Outline
Racism and sexism are bad for society, plain and simple. They create and perpetrate misunderstandings which have historically lead to conflict, sometimes violent. Even if the institutionalized manifestations of racism and sexism are ousted, it’s still alive and well in persons and communities. Those people who choose to subscribe to a hateful mentality that blankets judgment based solely on characteristics determined pre-birth are bad people. It divides us unfairly, and more often than not the people who are oppressed develop a hatred for the class perpetrating the oppression. (Understandably)
This doesn’t have to be the case. We as a society can address this issue head on and change the future of humanity to eliminate hatred forever, if we wanted to. The problem is, for generations on generations the people with the most power to attack the problem were the main perpetrators. They successfully institutionalized inequality, with the power always given disproportionately to white men.
I often feel guilty being born a privileged white male in America. I wish I understood what it would be like to live in another’s life, how would something I can’t control, affect me so negatively so often? The least I can do is ask questions, listen, try to understand, then advocate and educate for the underrepresented.
The reason I am so decidedly against these unfair and often hateful ideologies is because I’ve seen the results, albeit second hand. Technically, I was raised in an area where I was statistically a racial minority. I had strong female influences in my early life through my two sisters and caring mother as well as consistently solid male influences through my father and friends. My experiences were relatively diversified, and I quickly Iearned there’s no difference between you and I. If you are a living being, you yearn for love. Your job as a living human is to give that love to your fellow creatures. Because, “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room on Earth.” – Muhammad Ali
It’s time for us all to start paying our full rent. Alas, with every large societal change, it will take the efforts of many … and a generation of cooperation.
Outline:
I will of course recommend solutions [Action], but first I find it important to understand how we got to this situation in the first place. Skip around if you’d like.
- Summary and Outline
- Brief History of Women’s and Minority’s Rights
- Evolutionary Byproduct Theory
- Necessity/Availability of Worldly Understanding
- Masculinity Complex
- Action
- Concluding Thoughts
Brief History of Women’s and Minority’s Rights
There are four main pieces of legislation that enable women and minorities to participate in government, namely the 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. For those who don’t know how important these are let me remind you. After the Civil War, you know, that 1861-1865 bloodbath fought over slavery expansion into the west, yeah, the south had to agree to a few reconstruction amendments in order to be represented in Congress again. These amendments abolished slavery, guaranteed citizenship and equal protection of rights, and voting rights for non-whites. Women gained their right vote nationally later in 1920 thanks to the 19th amendment, and all the women and men who fought for the cause. Then finally, not until 100 years post Civil War did the federal government truly guarantee equal rights for voting, outlawing unfair Jim Crow Laws, with the Voting Rights Act. Now they are equal in the eyes of the law, right?
Sure, but oppression is still rampant, equal treatment goes far past the ability to vote, go to school, work, and pay taxes. In order to understand why, it’s important to look even further back, to the origins of our nation.
The Atlantic Slave Trade wasn’t originally racially charged. It was a byproduct of imperial capitalism. European’s created a high demand for the goods being created in the colonies. To keep up with demands and ensure the fattest financial returns – sorry, to ensure “growth” – the new American capitalists needed a large, yet affordable workforce. They tried enslaving natives, but they were either too proud, too dangerous, or would die to malaria. So, why not just ship in laborers from the already well established slave trade market in Africa? They had developed immunity to malaria, a major obstacle encountered in these slavery plantations a.k.a. labor camps. Poor whites saw their job opportunities diminish due to this process and resented African-American slaves, even after they got better jobs in the city. Rich whites needed to display their dominance in order to control their completely involuntary, outnumbering workforce. The owners were in constant fear of a violent slave uprising, so they institutionalized racism. After generations of this perpetual hatred and oppression, racism was ingrained in every white person, obvious hyperbole. Most whites were taught from a very early age that they were God’s children, and that black kids were destined to hell’s fury. They were told that they were a lesser species. This was accepted as truth and has now lived on in some form or another for generations.
Women have an even longer history of inequality that seems more ingrained in our society. Which is why it’s for sure hardest to be a non-white female. This I believe stems from a same sort of institutionalized patriarchy, just one that manifested in human society far earlier on. It’s cultural characteristics vs. a biological separation. Both critical for a healthy society’s survival, and elements of evolution, but one is recognizable before widespread multi-cultural understanding. Which I will talk more about in the next section.
Evolutionary Byproduct Theory
Two words, in-groups and out-groups. Evolutionary psychology tells us that we have always wanted to classify the people around us. There’s a reason why we are naturally prone to gossip: we want to know what type of person other people are. We tend to classify people by many things like economic class, culture, race, religion, and sex. All of us belong to a particular group in each of these classifications. And we naturally associate and advocate for those groups. Many groups form coalitions that sponsor negative rhetoric and action toward others. These often negative associations for people of a different class leads to the philosophy of in-groups and out-groups.
This is a mentality that seems universal to all creatures of evolution. Other species utilize different forms of class structure, most often seen in the separation in labor based on sex. For some reason, just about every culture in human history has exemplified some sort of patriarchal structure. However separate the workload, is it equal? I’d wager no. This is an idea I’ve grappled with for much of the past month, brought about by a few questions I had: When did motherhood stop being considered a better gig than practically anything else? Was it ever considered equal in the eyes of society?
Can we graduate ourselves out of this deeply ingrained separation of power? It seems like the only way we can, is to collectively realize the fact that we are developing a society who’s needs of gender roles are changing. Valuation of a person’s time spent contributing to society should not be judged with such narrow terms as often is done with money, rather by the happiness and fulfillment of the person. I stray away from evaluating a person’s value based on the number of other’s they impact, quality over quantity is a hard argument to fight sometimes. We are changing our own futures now, increasing our reach and speeding past evolution’s hand.
I believe this understanding and change is already in it’s early stages. Equality will grow due to the wide accessibility and understanding of out-group perspectives.
Necessity/Availability of World Understanding
Gaining a well-rounded world view goes a long way to increase the diversity of perceived in-groups. The environment you get raised in, that is the people you learn from and associate with, greatly impact what you think is normal. Growing up well attuned to the differences exemplified across the globe gives the best chance at understanding the myriad of cultures and customs. Experience fuels decision making. The larger breadth of experience, the greater acceptance of others. How romantic.
In recent times, due to the large accessibility of internet communications across the globe, people have been learning more and more about people completely unlike themselves. Honestly, since the era of television people have been taking note of the apparent different lifestyles – domestic and international. I firmly believe that the solution to these problems can come from improved and encouraged access to a wide range of diverse publications on the web. Not just written stories, but audio and video alike. Someday we will have sophisticated enough virtual reality to experience life from a truly alternate point of view. Want to see the affects of racism? -> Enter the perspective of a black guy at a traffic stop. Want to feel sexism? -> Enter the perspective of a woman in a board meeting getting shutdown by her male colleagues.
Access to these advanced technologies may not be widely available, but what should be is the core internet technology. I believe the web of knowledge we humans have created and called the internet should be free and accessible to all people as a right. I often say that people have a right to pursue knowledge, not always attain it depending on classification, but pursue it regardless.
However technology can sometimes foster exclusivity, certain groups will only continue the hate online. This may discourage people from change, but I have faith in humanity that the majority of users would see past the malice. This also has a lot to do with proper education and instruction detailing the difference between well-intentioned and evil user-group.
Masculinity Complex
America has a truly ill conceived ideology of the way a man is supposed to act. These masculinity notions are passed down from generation to generation through fable and fiction. Sayings like “be a man” carry with them connotations that often encourage belittlement of alternate viewpoints. It’s truly no wonder that so many men are being publicly scorned for their sexually heinous actions. These men have been indoctrinated into a society that reaffirms their masculine superiority. In university, I always found it so appalling when guys would congratulate other men on their hookups whereas women would sometimes shame each other for a similar action. Neither group is always correct in their judgment, but the disconnect was apparent. Men are revered by other men who admire their sexual prowess. Yet little is asked of them as to how they managed their fortune, and as we’ve found out time and time again it has a lot to do with force and coercion rather than mutual agreeance.
This problem is rooted deeply in american society. I believe it stems from a sort of reinforced entitlement. The same entitlement that has perpetrated the hateful racism by white people for decades. American culture encourages objectification of women through venues such as: pageantry, fashion/modeling, pornography, and even hooters. These are a few choice examples, but others can be drawn from historical portrayal of flight attendants or secretaries. Even war contributes to this complex, after all, conscription (the draft/selective service) is sexist.
The fact that we as a society have yet to graduate beyond this masculinity complex is not entirely surprising. But unlike the changes necessary to eradicate sexism and racism, this complex must go first. It governs much of the hate that has informally matured over the years. This can be solved with desire and understanding, just like the rest.
Action
As already mentioned a major influence of change is the diversity of an individual’s in-group. This can be increased in many ways, but the easiest by far is with the use of communication technology. Technology meant to share perspectives should be utilized in education from a young age. Alongside factual history and science education, children will be able to feel truly a part of the global society. In the process, they understand the struggle of out-group members. Coming to an understanding: that everyone is just trying their best with what they got. This greatly alleviates pressure from these negative ideologies. We as a society have seemingly outpaced evolution with our technologies. Once we all realize this, equal treatment of individuals will be obvious. Race and sex are pointless measures of capability.
On the recent subject of sexual misconduct: I personally believe that the public shaming of individuals based on allegations alone are hazardous to a healthy state with due process. But when a man has the decency enough to admit his wrong doings, he should be forgiven somewhat by society. He may not be able to do what he used to, but at least he was somewhat a man in the end – honest. Other individuals with racking allegations who deny wrongful action even when there is obvious evidence against them, are not very decent people.
Besides the most positive generational advice of educating the youth, the society must also educate the white men. White men need to increase their understanding then inspire and take positive action through education or advocacy. After all most of the burden is created by us. We should stand up for the underrepresented and disrespected. And always try to be models of sincerity and respect whichever way you choose to show it.
Lastly, it may be helpful to have powerful leaders stand as the head advocate to inspire more action and discussion about the issues at hand. I understand if you don’t want to get threatened or shot, but it may help morale and suppress the discouragement felt at times.
Conclusion
The sooner we act the better. This will undoubtedly take another generation to become noticeably better if we start now. Of course this is never going to go away completely, but we can try our hardest to not perpetrate the oppression. There are many resources online already available to educate people on all of these issues. Diversity and equality are the most important attributes to modern day society, we all need to realize that to overcome the barriers. Luckily a lot is being done right now, but more is on the way. So stop hurting and start helping.
Trip: My Home
Visual Tour:
I took my truck for a 8000 mile tour and thought I’d show you around the place I called home.
Other Notes:
I used gallon ziplock bags to hold small like items.
The rolling top locks on the end near the tailgate. A lever can be pulled to release the tension.
I held trash in the front mostly, with small trash bags, but it was mostly recyclable items. The back also had ties that I would use occasionally.
The clothes are in a laundry basket, rolled and stacked usually.
I didn’t show how I made my meals, but it is a backpacking stove with propane. Here’s a quick video: Cooking
Disclaimer:
I lost a few things and broke others, but over all stayed organized and clean.
Trip: 6 Weeks a Nomad
MEGA UPDATE
Holy hell I’m tired. I thoroughly apologize for taking so damn long to update the site on my travels. I sincerely was so busy exploring and adventuring that a bunch of work was pushed aside to simply experience the trip. Streaming was throttled back a tad as well due to me being on the road so often on the return trip home. Plus, keeping electronics charged out in the wild is difficult without a fat power inverter. But alas, I wrote everything down in my book. So here it is! I’ll break it down by location starting where I left off, because weeks and days starting getting really blurred.
Pittsburgh
I loved Pittsburgh, it might be because I saw it before it started to get all gloomy, which I guess it now has. Regardless, this place was a blast. I spoke with countless professors and students about life at the university, and more specifically about the Engineering and Public Policy program it offers. This seems like the perfect transitional fit for me considering I want to work in government some day. They have incredible connections and what seems to be a phenomenal internal structure and culture. I could definitely see myself going to school at CMU, but I need to build up my knowledge/resume/confidence before I apply. The application period opens in November, but I think I may wait a year or so until I’ve gotten some real software engineering experience.
I also met some beautiful individuals. While staying at the Delt chapter I got the opportunity to fraternize with my bothers. We shared stories over meals and drinks, and I was lucky enough to attend their chapter meeting and thank all the brothers for their hospitality. I saw my first familiar face in the man who helped start my chapter in SLO, Evan, who is the chapter adviser for CMU Delt. The other adviser, Jaison, took me out to a brewery for a couple of pints and we talked in depth about the EPP program. He was the main reason I got so much face time with persons in the program, and was one of the most compassionate men I met. Overall, I couldn’t thank them all enough for what they did for me. Other than just cool dudes, I also met a few cool chicks. One in particular stood out among the rest for her diverse past and incredibly adventurous personality. Julia showed me the Pittsburgh downtown scene on a very interesting non-binary double tinder date. Saw her twice, hope to make it a third someday.
Niagara Falls
We all know how powerful water is, from flooding, to erosion, to hydro-power. But you will never understand the power of water until you visit Niagara Falls. I was told I would not be too impressed, but whoever said that didn’t know how easily impressed I am haha. I loved it. Selfie stick in hand, I skated around and acted like a total tourist. I didn’t stay for more than a few hours because I had to be in Boston in 2 days, but this little side excursion was totally worth it.
There was only one hiccup, the US/Canada Border Patrol. Pulled up to the entry to Canada and this is what played out:
Canadian Border Patrol Agent: “Where you from? … California?! What are you doing all the way out here? … You live out of your truck? Are you planning on staying the night in Canada? … No? Alright, well do you have any Alcohol, Tobacco or Firearms with you? … No, cool. Whats in the back of your truck? … Your bed and camping supplies? Alrighty then, we are going to have you pull into spot 14 for a full search of your vehicle.”
Fuck. Sorta. I never lied to him, but I did have some weird and potentially illegal stuff in my car I know they’d find. But whatever, if I go to Canada jail for small amounts of weed or the suspicion that I was defecting, I’m sure I could figure my way out of the situation.
Ten minutes of watching them rip my car up and having a drug dog smell me up, I built up a bit of a nervous sweat. I did not plan ahead for this. Luckily, everything was chill. They let me pass with no problem, and when I got back to the truck they had all the questionable stuff on the passenger seat noting their findings and leaving them be. I suppose
they were more interested in finding smuggled cocaine or trafficked humans. So with a sigh of relief, I continued on into Canada.
Getting back to America was easy, pass the BP agent my passport, a few questions later… “Welcome home”.
Boston
I made it to Boston the night before my morning flight to Seattle. Made dinner on the back of my truck and slept in the economy airport parking lot. This lot stood next to the refueling jets, lets just say I had some weird dreams that night that may or may not have been fume based. Hopped on my 6AM flight and 5 hours later landed in somehow sunny Seattle.
Seattle
One of my main objectives along the way was to find places I could see myself living in more permanently. Seattle was the second city/area I found to fit the bill. The downtown was not overwhelming large, and there were many districts around that provided for a nice taste of diversity.
The whole reason I was in Seattle was for an on-site interview with Amazon on Friday. They flew me out early Thursday, which gave me time to explore the city and get a feel for everything. I ended up skating to a Chicago pizza joint for lunch, dinner, then dinner the next day. I probably could have sampled more places, but I figured since I missed the pizza in Chicago, I would try it in Seattle lol.
Later that day I went to a bar downtown called The Whiskey Bar, and got hammered. This kicked off the first of many charades I called “Find Your Way Home”. With hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have started the game the night before my interview, but I was pretty confident. Skated tipsy around the city and managed to find my way back to the hotel. Later trials of the game included finding my parked truck/friends apartment.
The interview on Friday went great! I got to talk about my travels with other interesting and cool engineers. I made a friend, Omar, before the interview started up and at some point used one of my favorite quotes, “I ain’t no bitch.” I think it was in relation to how I wouldn’t buy a more comfortable sleeping arrangement for my truck. We chatted throughout the day, had lunch together and ended up getting told the same thing at the end of the whole process, “Sorry we filled the position, more spots may open later”. Sounds like Amazon had a freeze, and needed to recount their openings. All applicants from my day on (thousands) got the same message, whoops lol.
After the nearly day long interview I decided to chill out by the sound and sample one of the many hemp shop’s goods. Turned in for the night relatively early, set no alarm, and passed out.
I woke up the next day an hour and a half prior to my return flight. The skate to the rail station was going to be 10-15 minutes, the rail would be 30, and who knows how long security would take. Long story short, I showed up for the last boarding call and sat my smelly ass down in between two lovely old ladies. Luckily, prevailing winds cut the trip time down a full hour. Landed in Boston in the evening and made my way to Cambridge.
Cambridge and Boston
After the recent success of “Find Your Way Home”, I decided to take another stab at it. This time I headed to a “Harvard Bar” I don’t remember exactly which, but I figured going to the one in Good Will Hunting was a bit unnecessary and out of reach. Woke up the next day, Sunday, and had a blast streaming Harvard Yard and a local street fair. However, I wasn’t really feeling the vibe. Checked out MIT and the Delt chapter there, but decided to keep on the move and start heading South toward NY.
https://clips.twitch.tv/KathishExuberantFishDxCat
That was, until I met a girl named Nat. We decided to visit an art museum since it was free admission for the holiday. I got to know her very well as we eventually made our way into downtown Boston. One good thing about the city was it’s oddly diverse architecture style. Many buildings extended past their footprint, and others were left unchanged since the colonial days. The city and all its luster was lost on me since I had already decided to leave. So with a goodbye we parted ways, but only after a deep understanding of each other’s person was made, and I headed South.
Rhode Island and Conneticut
Right around this point in my trip I started developing a really nasty case of tonsillitis. It started slowly, but due to stress and poor sleeping habits it only got worse as the days went on. So I decided to take it easy as I made my way down the east coast towards the next stop, New York City. One of my best days was spent at Harkness Memorial State Park on the coast of Connecticut just hammocking and writing in my journal. I got to touch the Atlantic Ocean, which was a goal of mine from the beginning. Even more over, I was able to sleep and mediate for hours. Little days of relaxation were super necessary as I got further and further away from home.
Also, Connecticut was the only state where I had a run in with the police. The story isn’t that interesting, but I learned a valuable lesson. If you plan on sleeping in your car in a neighborhood, choose your spot wisely and later in the night. After an interrogation lasting 10 minutes, I hadn’t given the officer any reason to search so I asked to be released and he reluctantly did. I’m pretty sure the neighbors though I was a drug dealer or something and wanted me out of their neighborhood. I drove a few minutes north, parked in a similar hood, and hopped out quickly to later return and climb in the back.
New York City
This was by far my favorite place on the whole trip. New York City has a really special feel to it, unlike any other city encountered. At this point I was tremendously ill, but was determined to still make the most of my visit. I took the train in from New Jersey early in the morning, and headed to Central Park. I didn’t remember much from the last time I visited NYC, but knew I had to skate around Central Park. Checked off another life goal with that beautiful skate. I live streamed as much of the city as I could, before catching my old friend, Colin Adams, for lunch. He works at Google in the big apple, and for lunch I got treated to a free Google buffet, yeah that was nice. We talked about life after college and passion finding. He enlightened me to the fact that most people have to balance their own personal desires with those around them. Responsibility doesn’t mean giving up your dreams, it just means compromise. That’s why I hope to be well on my way toward my dream job before I settle down, get married, and start having kids. All in due time.
Unfortunately, him and his fiancee were traveling to DC for the weekend and wouldn’t be able to show me around the city. No matter, they still were kind enough to lend me their quaint apartment for the weekend. I was able to spend a day trying to get well and catch up on sleep, much needed. I wrote a poem that night that I would end up recording on their rooftop lounge. Some highlights of the day included visiting the 9/11 memorial, which I start to tear up just thinking about, and skating in the busy streets of Manhattan.
The next day I slept in as much as I could, and only went out in the late afternoon for amazing pizza and to stretch my legs. That night however, was to be the third run of my game. I went to a very notorious jazz bar, paid a fat cover, and proceeded to get three drinks in a 90 minute set. This was the first time where I felt like a 10 out of 10.
Normally when people ask me how I’m doing, I’ll give them a numerical answer ranging form 1 to 10, ten being the best. I lived in a depressed state all last year hovering around 5 or 6. Not until I started traveling did I notice it rise to an average of 7. Then it kept rising, and peaked at 10 a few times, this being the first and best. The band came up to my spot at the bar during and after the set and thanked me for my enthusiasm. I was by far the loudest and most vibe-ing patron. After the set I went to a few more bars to grab a drink and check out the scene.
https://go.twitch.tv/videos/181891696
Decided to head out the next morning, bearing towards DC. Cleaned up the apartment, and thanked the couple for their incredible hospitality in a note, and left.
Car Troubles
Something was bound to go wrong. After a full inspection pre-departure, I knew there was little to no way I was going to make it through 8,000 miles without some mechanical failure. My battery light came on while driving towards DC. A few things could be broken, so I checked them all. The alternator was dying. It wasn’t completely dead yet, but if I didn’t take care of it, my car would run out of battery on the road and just about cease to be useful. My engine would surely overheat and I’d be in way bigger trouble. So I took it into a local shop, chatted up the store clerk while the mechanic switched out the part. A bit of a bummer and unforeseen expense, but I was back on the road in no time!
Washington D.C.
Before each big city, when I knew I’d be streaming as much as I could, I would often spend a full day or two preparing. I would prep for travels, locations to visit, and charge up all my electronics and battery packs. This also would give me an opportunity to research or write a blog post. Which is why I didn’t get around to writing as many as I’d like, I just didn’t get that many opportunities to do so. Nevertheless, I spent this time writing my post on gun violence.
D.C. was immaculate. I arrived early in the morning to visit all the major monuments and memorials before the big crowds. Boy was I rewarded greatly for this initiative. The entire mall was empty except for a few morning joggers. I was able to visit each cite and stream them with nobody to block my view. My favorite was walking through the FDR memorial and laughing at all the quotes we will never hear our current president say. I even wondered aloud at a point, “I bet Trump hasn’t even been to this place.”
https://go.twitch.tv/videos/183154816
While visiting the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial I noticed his addiction to “Justice”. I admitted my reluctance to accepting this word and ideal as one I like. After some more research into human history and better understanding of the full picture of justice I have changed my opinion. I like justice, in fact I demand it. To me, justice are the actions taken after an injustice. Without justice, humans are allowed to take advantage of each other with no fear of repercussion. Hammurabi to Julies Cesar, the question of just justice has always been debated. I don’t claim to know all the answers, but I know that my fight for justice will not be the same as many past revolutionaries. I want to fight against the injustice of corporate greed and unethical economic practices. Of course I still care about women/minority rights, but I see a bigger evil in capitalistic fueled inequality.
I wrote another poem while in D.C. This time, with a self inflicted time limit to draft it: 10 minutes. I wrote a piece on motivation because at this time I was finalizing my own. Which I wrote down in my book and will continue to attack with ferocity.
I visited many museums, monuments, memorials, statues, and witnessed the three branches buildings. I felt satisfied after a long day and decided not to return for another day.
Appalachian Backpacking
It had been way too long since I brought out the full backpacking gear set. At this point I had decided for sure that I would be visiting another one of my old friends who had graduated and moved across the country. So, I let him know I was on the way, but would be spending a few days in the wilderness beforehand. He told me the weekend would be best, so I was chillen. The first night I essentially car camped, but pitched my hammock in the forest for a bit more seclusion. The second day I packed up my gear and hit a trail. This was all done in the South Appalachian, the Carolinas.
It felt good to be somewhere nobody could get to me. I added a value to my principles, solitude. I find that my favorite types of vacation have an element of solitude. As much as I thoroughly enjoy people, I crave a place where there is no sign of human life. No telephone poles, no cars, no people. Nature does the trick often, but I’ll still get the occasional wireless signal and airplane over head. Can’t wait until I get to visit Antarctica. (I’m going to visit all 7 continents, 5 to go)
Atlanta
Throughout the trip, whenever I was driving or hanging out in a new area I would listen to rappers from that area. I was very pleased to make it to Atlanta, that meant I got to listen to my favorite artist, Childish Gambino. Not only that, but I got to visit one of my greatest friends from the beginning of college, Mike Nothem. He had graduated when I did, and went back to school to obtain a M.S. in Aerospace Engineering. He posted me up in his place and introduced me to all his new friends. We were going to the Georgia Tech football game against Wake Forest, so I borrowed a GT shirt and played the part. After a fun pre-game at his buddy (Isaac’s) house we headed to the game. I had no ticket, so there was only one option, plead drunk ignorance and weasel my way in. Worked like a charm and we ended up winning the match!
After the game there were some shenanigans, but the most fun was trying to get a shell store attendant to sell alcohol 30 minutes past the legal time. It didn’t work out, but I learned an important lesson, alcohol hours vary per state and locale. So, find a place with the most liberal laws, like New Orleans!
The next day was hangover recovery and catching up on sleep. I probably should have written this post then, but I wanted to play GTA with my friend lol. We made dinner and I bid him a grateful farewell in the morning.
New Orleans
Back to the Mississippi! Before arriving to New Orleans, I learned of some interesting history that guided my experience in the swamp city. Apparently back in the early 1800s France fucked their entire economy due to a credit bubble similar to the housing bubble in 2008. Unlike other ventures at the time such as Boston and New Amsterdam/York, this one failed tremendously. Lies and government corruption caused the first large scale stock crash of human history.
So it was no surprise when I arrived and found the city to be incredibly small. There weren’t any skyscrapers, no transit, no flare. That is until it hit midnight. The streets started lighting up with sounds of Jazz. I visited a few live jazz bars and hit another 10/10. I would love to find a weed and beer jazz bar some day, then I may just break the scale. I was having a grand time until I decided to take a skate in the rugged streets of NO. I fell and cut my hand and knee open pretty bad. That was the end of the night for me, I went back to my car, bandaged the wounds and went to bed. I left the next morning.
At this point in the trip I was about ready to get home. I was still 2,000 miles away, but I wanted to be done. So, instead of stopping in Austin, I drove straight through Texas and New Mexico.
Arizona: Petrified Forest, Painted Desert, Sedona
My last state before I return to the great western banana called California. I spent a few days in the Arizona desert and had a blast! Initially I had a very hard time just picking a day hike to make. The first days were dedicated to chilling out and reminiscing on the trip. After I had come to terms with the end, I went on a few crazy hikes to get as high as possible with my feet still on ground. I climbed to the top of Cathedral Rock in Sedona and streamed my high altitude beer from the peak, then the hike down as well. Saw a guy carrying up a didgeridoo, and had him play it, 9.5/10 cuz my knee was still bleeding from when I reopened it climbing up the hill.
https://clips.twitch.tv/CrispyBigBeefOSsloth
Overall I loved Arizona, right up there with my love for Coloardo, you just don’t have to worry about snow in Arizona.
California: Joshua Tree, UCSB, Cal Poly
I finished up my desert camping in the beautiful Joshua Tree National Park, where I started really thinking about value theory. I love ethics, and often think of it as the more important side of value theory coin. Yet, aesthetics theory took a hold of my mind whilst sitting on top of a 200 meter tall rocky pillar. I wondered about natural beauty, and what it means to us humans. I think Plato had it just about right when he said they whisper to us our inner desires. I read a lot on the final portion about philosophy and great philosophers. Starting with Aristotle and Plato, then working through stoicism all the way to Marxism. It helped me clarify my own personal philosophy when I heard centuries old dead Greeks saying the same thing I was saying.
After Joshua Tree, I visited my little sister in Santa Barbara. Julianna, or Julie as she prefers, just got to school and has already faced a number of challenges. Similar to what I had faced once in my life, I gave advice on poignant issues and insisted she read more of my blog. Some day I’ll write a post on my family, they’re an odd bunch.
I left after chatting for a few hours to return to my college town of San Luis Obispo. And that’s where I am now, enjoying time with friends, and planning for the next steps.
Next Steps
I don’t have all that much money left after this long trip, so I feel the need to go to work. The capitalist in me, feels motivated, but the socialist wants to keep searching for purpose. I compromise to do both, yet the balance is yet to be defined. I know for a fact that I need to return to my family home in Fresno and spend a few weeks sitting in the same spot and mashing away at key and mouse. I must take the next step in my grand plan. But at least I’m poised to take that step with confidence and certainty in my bright future.
I will probably still travel around locally, living out of my truck as I have done for many weeks now. But, I need to devote a considerate amount of my time to taking the next step. Stay tuned for more posts about ethical dilemmas our nation faces, and how I want to solve them.
Gun Violence and the Media
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. -2nd Amendment
This may just be one of the most outdated and antiquated amendments in the whole 27, right after the third amendment outlawing the quartering of troops. Most people shorten it to “the right to bear arms”, yet the first begets the second. In order to understand this amendment, it’s important to think through the perspective of the early Americans back in 1789. At the time, the military was very weak, and slow to deploy. They had no speedy transportation, and literally had to march anywhere if there were a battle waging. Also at this time Americans were under threat from native tribes, since they sorta kicked them off their land and killed their families.With these two things in mind, the extreme infancy of an organized military/police force and the constant threat of attack, citizens were all but encouraged to own weapons and know how to use them. A whole community of men could form a militia to defend the rest of the community and act as a supplementary force to the aforementioned organized troops. Not only this, but the framers were afraid of tyrannical governments. Allowing citizens to have the same access to the weapons the military did ensured a fair fight if they wanted to revolt. This was necessary back then, yet has become completely unnecessary now.
Today, due to technological advancement, we have automatic rifles, handheld explosives with incredible potency, and nukes. I can assure you the framers did not anticipate these sort of arms. So why then am I not allowed to keep and bear a thermonuclear warhead? If I have the cash for it, assuming. Because that’s nonsensical, nobody needs that. Needless to say there are many restrictions on this amendment, similar to libel and the first amendment, you can’t have any weapon you want. Yet honestly, it seems that there are more laws governing blades then there are governing firearms. In this post I will dive deep into the very American culture surrounding guns, what policy decisions got us here, and what we can do about people unnecessarily dying to firearms. Lastly I will talk about mass shootings and the media, then conclude with recognition for alternative killers of the American people.
America the Gun Toting Nation
There are more guns than people in America. This fact alone is pretty bonkers. Nearly half of all households own at least one weapon. There are many common day reasons for owning a firearm but the two most popular are sport and protection. When people refer to sport shooting like hunting, they often are referring to rifles and shotguns. When referring to protection, most people think handguns. This isn’t always the case, but is a general consensus. Compared to other nations, not only do we own WAY more guns, but we also have WAY more gun deaths: who would have thought? Many people have been quoted saying gun violence is a developing epidemic in America, however I am forced to dispute. When looking at the data, gun related deaths on the decline, but mass shootings are increasing. (Which I’ll talk about more later) And to be honest, most deaths are suicide. There is a lot of speculation as to why this is the case, but its just that speculation. The real question is not whether it’s becoming an epidemic, just whether or not it’s a public health issue. I think it is undoubtedly a public health issue, due alone to the incredible rise in mass shootings the the recent decade. So why does it seem like there is so little formulated data on incidents? Well, that’s where a complicated series of policy decisions come into play. By complicated I mean contradictory, special interest infested, and loophole generated. The general trend towards looser gun policy does not match the consensus of the populous.
A Messy Gun Policy Landscape
We already know about the second amendment, but what other laws and regulatory agencies have their hands in this complicated mess of gun policy? Let’s start with the players then dive into the rules of the game.
Players:
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
The ATF or ATFE as it is commonly referred as is the main federal enforcer of all laws passed regarding these four items. It sits under the Department of Justice, and has two major jobs relating to firearms. The first is to issue FFLs (Federal Firearm License) to authorized manufactures and sellers of guns. There are different levels of this license, but essentially it means they are a legit seller of guns. You don’t necessarily need a FFL to sell guns, which is something I’ll talk about later. The second main thing this organization does is investigate illegal firearms activity. In the past there has been many horrible incidents of failed stings and illegal searches, so lately it seems there has been a real back-off. They also create initiatives to protect the public and enable law enforcement to track weapons through a newer gun tracing program.
Their mission is simple when it comes to guns, “ATF recognizes the role that firearms play in violent crimes and pursues an integrated regulatory and enforcement strategy”. So they’re here to help us, they are the good guys. But they don’t get to make the laws, congress does.
Congress
Both federal and state congresses pass laws regulating or deregulating guns in America. Sometime’s they are at odds with each other, nothing new here. Many bad laws have been passed by past federal congresses, especially due to the second largest political advocacy group behind AARP, the NRA.
National Rifle Association
This is a nonprofit organization who lobbies congress, endorses candidates and organizes voters who favor gun-owner sided policy. I choose my words wisely here, because they don’t necessarily want looser gun laws. They simply want to enable voters with the knowledge they need on policies and issues relating to guns. They are all for safety, provided gun safety courses and marksmanship classes. However, over the years, they have sponsored bills that I believe have provided loopholes for criminals and been to the detriment of the American public.
Center for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services
I put the CDC and DHHS in here because they often are in charge of researching public health hazards. Yet, their funding for gun violence research was stripped in 1996 due to NRA lobbied Jay Dickey removing budget considerations for them. This dramatically restricted any data collection and not until 2012 did they start research on gun violence again. SMH
Supreme Court
These 9 old judges don’t often play a large role in this game, but have in the past. Striking down just about any state or federal law that tries to cross the second amendment. Because, you know, strict interpretation of the constitution works so well 230 years later…
Civilians
I can’t leave out the most important players, the actual people who buy, sell, and use guns. Whether they are FFL certified sellers, private sellers, private buyers, straw purchasers, or criminals: guns don’t kill people – people kill people with guns.
Rules of the Game:
Many laws have contributed to this complicated gun policy landscape, but I am going to focus on the two most important. There is also a few court cases, but I’ll just highlight one that sort of got us to where we are today.
This law was passed after many huge public figures were assassinated in short time. It charged the ATF with distributing and authorizing distributors of firearms with the FFL. The law was then bolstered in 1993 when the Brady Act was passed requiring all FFL holders to background check each purchaser. The main purpose of this bill was to disallow the capability of mail ordering weapons, which even the NRA agreed to at the time. (Since they mailed the gun that killed JFK) It initially tried to require by law all weapons be nationally registered and have all owners be nationally licensed, but that wouldn’t make it into the final law. Those are still managed per state, and some states are far more lackadaisical.
In many people’s opinion this was a huge mistake, ripping the second amendment open – bordering on tyranny. But honestly, it fell short of its aspirations, then was practically destroyed by the next law. Also, the text of the law only required businesses dealing weapons to own a FFL, not private 2nd market sellers. It also mandated FFL licensed dealers to sell exclusivley at the address listed on the FFL, but this wouldn’t last for long.
So this was a major de-regulation law. Not only did it give FFL holders the capability to sell at locations other than their listed address, it extremely loosened the definitions for a business dealing arms. Essentially it yanked a lot of authority from the ATF, since they were kinda going crazy at the time, and “gave the power back to law abiding, gun-owning, citizens”. But it opened up a huge loophole for criminals to exploit! (I’ll talk about this loophole in the next section)
This supreme court decision ruled in favor of Heller stating that DC’s handgun ban violated the individual’s right to own and bear arms. Essentially, this formally stated that the right to own and bear arms as stated in the second amendment was an individual right as opposed to a right reserved to a person in a militia. (LOL K) This did so much more than just recognize the fact that individuals have the right to own weapons for self-defense, it also reclassified handguns as legal arms and allowed guns to be stored loaded. These were all strikes to previous laws passed by congress, trending heavily toward loose regulation of guns. It however did not challenge any state jurisdiction, since DC isn’t technically a state. A later case asserted the federal authority, McDonald vs Chicago.
How Criminals Get Guns
First off, I want to reiterate, a majority of gun related deaths are suicide. While these are no longer deemed crimes, it’s still a very difficult societal matter. After all, we don’t want people killing themselves, with guns or meds or anything. So if we want to drop these gun death numbers, we should seriously consider a whole new approach to mental illness. I’ll save that for another post.
So there are a few ways criminals can get their hands on guns both legally and illegally through loopholes.
The most common way criminals get guns is through a second hand market. A private “seller” can basically say “they didn’t seem to be a criminal or mean any negative intent” and legally sell the gun. I put “sell” in quotes because it could just be given to them, no trade made. This is the way that most guns get into criminals hands, but who are the people selling them these guns? Who makes the initial “legal” purchase? It could be just about anybody honestly.
With the “Gun Show Loophole” any private seller can say the same thing at a large event where both FFL certified and uncertified vendors sell guns. They don’t have to background check, they don’t have to request identification, they don’t have to do anything but make a sale. (Capitalism at its finest) Even FFL certified sellers can do this if the specific weapon was transferred to personal ownership at least a year ago, I wonder if anybody forges documents in this industry? What I’m saying here is that even a convicted felon could walk into a gun show and purchase a weapon. Apparently the ATF reports that anywhere from 50-75% of sales are made from FFL certified dealers. Also, if you want to buy anything but a handgun, you don’t even have to be a citizen of the state! And from what I can tell from a few hidden camera videos, even that is rare, if you have the cash, they won’t ask for ID. These legal private sales are why so many gang members in California and Mexico have semi-automatic assault rifles, because they legally purchase them and smuggle them over state/national borders. The best part about this, the seller is almost never liable. Unless the buyer says “I am a felon/fugitive/minor/dishonorable discharge/mentally ill” the seller can legally claim ignorance.
Straw purchasers are another sub-problem. Remember that underage kid asking you to buy them beer? Yeah that’s what a straw purchase is. If a criminal wanted to get a gun through a FFL certified authority, they could get a legal purchaser to buy it for them. Then as you know, the second hand market is always a black one. However illegal this is, it’s almost untraceable and can be very easily ousted by that “good guy” claim.
How to Prevent Crime and Death
I often try to find corollaries when attempting to understand new topics. When looking at guns I couldn’t help but to think of cars. After all, they are items owned by individuals that aren’t inherently evil, can can easily become so. There are different kinds of guns and cars that require different licenses to own and operate. They both require a certain level of aptitude in order to operate. The only difference is that the right to drive isn’t in the bill of rights, damn. But seriously, so many restrictions on guns are shot down because it’s seen as a right. (No pun intended)
Realistic Policies
Whenever a pro-gun advocate says “they want to take away our guns”, I sorta laugh. There is no way guns will ever be completely outlawed, its practically impossible. Like I mentioned, there are more guns than people in america. Not only that, but people can legally make their own guns, and now people can even 3D print their own weapons. It would be complete nonsense to even attempt to round up all the weapons in american. We tried that with alcohol one time, and it had far more severely negative consequences. What we need to do is come up with sensible regulation and policy to curb this budding national health hazard. Here is what I think would work.
Licensing
13 states and DC require a license to own/purchase a firearm. Only one of them requires aptitude tests, my home state of California :). It’s honestly shocking that there is no federal mandate for states to require this sort of licensing for guns. After all, the DMV licensing program did a hell of a job at curbing vehicle deaths which were on the rise at the time. The license would cost a flat fee and would expire after a set time, just like a driver’s license. The gun owner would need to verify that they can pass a background check, and are not participating in illegal re-sale of firearms. There would be different license levels for different guns, accompanied by different tests to verify aptitude. Someone who knows how to shoot a handgun, doesn’t necessarily know how to operate a semi-automatic rifle, or shotgun. Sure, the triggers are similar, but so are gas pedals in sedans and 18-wheeler trucks.
In my mind, this is a no brainer. If an individual is caught with a gun and doesn’t have the appropriate license for it, it can be confiscated and the individual fined or jailed (semantics up to the state to determine). This is done to an extent somewhat with concealed carry and open carry licenses, but there is no clear consensus across states. If the federal government passed a law to mandate this, it would go a long way to preventing wrongful ownership of firearms.
Gun Titles/Registration
When you sell your vehicle, you have to fill out a vehicle ownership title transfer. Commonly referred to as a pink slip, you aren’t the legal owner of the vehicle until you get one. In my opinion, every gun should be registered to an individual, even after the first sale. This makes tracing gun transfers so much easier, and narrowing down on the offending seller of guns to criminals. If a gun is confiscated at the scene of the crime and the last owner isn’t involved, they will be partially liable for the crime, because they failed to fill out the proper paperwork to transfer ownership, or cloned it stolen through the police. This will encourage sellers to use the title transfer system for fear of liability. If multiple guns are found in crimes with the same final dealer, that should be considered a felony as they are obviously intentionally distributing guns to criminals.
Gun registration doesn’t have to cost much or even be re-purchased every year like car registration. Unless an argument is to be made that guns need to be smogged or something similar. This system would only be in place to determine ownership of firearms. There would be no limit on the amount of firearms you could own, like cars. A searchable database would be available to authorities to verify the legal ownership of a specific gun, or you would have to prove the owner has given you permission to hold it for them. Very similar to cars. If a car is unlicensed that’s a crime, so if a gun has its serial number removed, it’s illegal. Easy peasy.
Mandating NICS and Harsher Enforcement
The final piece of the puzzle to close the loophole is to require a National Instant Criminal Background Check System verification on every gun title change. Also, give ATF and local law enforcement more power to prosecute any illegal sale. Over 90% of the american population favor this legislation, the only reason it hasn’t been enacted is because of the NRA lobbying against it. This means that the test needs to be made available to private sellers. This provides a few problems. For one, sellers will have to self identify, maybe by being a gun owner with a license, you are assumed to sell privately, then being allowed to use the service. Or, you could have to apply for a seller designation on your license. It also will increase the demand for the check, which could be a technical problem, or just a man-power problem that the FBI would have to double down on.
More Research and Data
The CDC and NHHS need to be allowed to do more research on the affects of certain policies and crime rates. Having definitive information on what actions cause or correlate with others will give us a better understanding of the way guns are used. Similar to what needs to happen with marijuana, the more we relax these policies, we need to do more research on the affects of them. Like the 6% drop in opioid addiction cases since the legalization in Colorado. More data is almost never a bad thing, making informed decisions and policy DEFINITELY is never a bad thing. It’s shocking that for so long this was the case. Even Jay Dickey realized that before his death this year.
Mass Shootings and the Media
This section is admittedly going to be far smaller than the entirety of the rest of the post. Not because it doesn’t deserve the same attention, but because it’s a lot more opinionated that fact based. If you hadn’t noticed, mass shootings have been on the rise lately. The most recent big media hit was the Las Vegas shooting. The aforementioned proposals may help in not allowing this to happen again, but there is a far bigger perpetrator at play, the american media.
Sensationalizing crime for viewership has been a common occurrence since the origins of the police car chase. In fact, many entire shows popped up glorifying crime on TV. Violence sells, and the media outlets know that. Even worse, exclusive coverage sells. So unless all stations agree to not blast a story with national coverage, they are going to show what their competitors are showing to get a share of the views. (Once again, capitalism at its best) But this creates a huge problem when it comes to mass shootings.
“What we believe may be happening is national news media attention is like a ‘vector’ that reaches people who are vulnerable”, said Sherry Towers who is researching the rise of mass shootings in America. After racking the data, mass media coverage of mass shootings follow a contagion like model. Meaning: mass shootings are infectious if widely displayed on media. So what do we do? We stop blasting this on national news for weeks on end! This video says it better than I ever could. Maybe the government needs to get involved, but damn, we need to stop this nonsense before more people die needlessly.
Suicide
Mass shootings only account for 1% of gun related deaths. 65% is suicide. As mentioned earlier, that’s not okay. Something needs to be done about this, but the policy opportunities are slim. This is more of a social issue that we need to address as a society of people. Breaking the stigma of depression is a good place to start, but there is so much more to be done. I will post in the future about the state of mental health education and awareness in america. For now, just know that this is a huge deal for me. I hate when people kill each other, but I am far more affected by the fact that people kill themselves. Being in the situation myself, I can understand and empathize. Don’t expect this administration to give a shit about this issue. Try again in a few years, meanwhile almost 100 people kill themselves everyday… So, 100,000 people will commit suicide by the time we even get a chance to fully replace this trash administration.
How to Find Your Why
Introduction: Why Find Your Why
“The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to feel important” – John Dewey
Do you believe him? The early 20th century philosopher wasn’t the only one to recognize the deepest desires of man center around the feeling of importance. But it begs the question, how does one achieve the satisfaction of this urge? I wager most people would give an answer like work or family as how they derive their feeling of importance. However, I’d say they are missing a fundamental truth. One does not need the gratification of others to obtain a feeling of importance. Similar to self regulated feelings of success, individuals can tell when they are important without hearing any affirmation from others.
Every person derives happiness and importance in different ways. Like I said in my life mission video, the meaning of life is subjective for the individual and objective for society. Yet so many people don’t have a good understanding of what their why is. Simon Sinek gave a really good TED talk about how the greatest organizations are successful because they start with their why. But it works for people too. Most people are often distracted with the less important vagaries of life. So distracted that they never clearly define their reason for living, their why.
Many videos on the internet talk about how to find your life purpose, but never give practical advice. This post provides a practical way to discover your why and transition to a more purposeful life.
Another important question is: Can someone live their life happily without fulfilling this urge to feel important? My argument is, not for long. Two major emotions keep us alive, hope and fear. The hope for a better life and the fear of death. The moment you stop fearing death and don’t have any hope for a better future, suicide is fair game. I’ve been there, I know how it feels. Hope is a far reach when you don’t feel productive, don’t feel like you’re making a difference, don’t feel important. So without fulfilling this desire to be important, you open up the doors to a life void of hope.
I haven’t met a person yet that hasn’t been forced to struggle at some point in there life. No person I know hasn’t had doubts about their future, and many have been through very similar states as mine. However, from what I can tell, one needs to experience this sort of emotional low in order to make a pivotal realization. Keep living and fight for importance, or die/live in sorrow and complacency.
In this post I will highlight how to turn this realization into action, using my own personal story as an example. Navigating this transition is a very personal endeavor, there are many ways to do it, but this one is mine. The post will be split up into Pre-Transition, Transition, and Post-Transition. At the end I will conclude with some final tips for success and words of encouragement.
Pre-Transition: The Storm Before the Calm
There are usually only a choice few occasions that will arise in one’s life allowing for a real shift in mentality. If the individual doesn’t recognize these opportunities, or is not ready to make a change, they miss their chance to springboard themselves forward into purposeful happiness. So let me explain what the opportunity looks like so you won’t miss it.
First off, age doesn’t really matter. Generally, the sooner the better because if you are living a life without directive, you’ll end up like the 49 year old taco bell cashier I meet in Pittsburgh.
Before I go any further I want to provide a disclaimer, not every person needs to want to kill themselves in order to make a healthy transition. I hope nobody has to go through that feeling. Here’s what classifies an opportunity to revolutionize one’s life:
- An unavoidable life obstacle that challenges an individuals core beliefs or fundamental principles.
- A lot more fear than hope. The less hope, the better the opportunity to change. If hope is a gauge on your vehicle of life, the low light better be on.
- That last bit of hope must be a deeply rooted desire to have a better life. One must have that sole hope in order to grow it into a fully flourished motivation.
With just those three requirements any person can turn a hardship into a catalyst for incredible change. Without the first, there is no need. Without the second, there is no desire. Without the third, there is nowhere to begin.
If there is truly no hope left, I urge you to think about your whole life and what is left to live. Think of all the potential you can have in one day’s time, the lives you could change with so little of your effort and time. Then realize you can have many more days if you make a change now.
If all three of these factors are at play, don’t let the opportunity pass without taking it, you may never have the chance again.
For me, at 21, I went through an incredibly powerful depression for many months. I was about to graduate college with no idea what I really wanted to do. I lost the person I was closest to because of my self hatred. I became an alcoholic, and became reliant on drugs to distract me from the truth. The truth that I was loosing hope. I was lucky, others still believed in me, but I was dwindling day after day. On the brink of suicide I realized my opportunity. Young, full of potential, I could be whomever I wanted to be. So I put into motion a grand plan, to transition myself into adulthood and a happier, more purposeful life. With help, I recognized the root of my depression, and fought tremendously to repair my mental. And I still fight every day, because as you’ll soon hear, you must never stop trying.
Transition: Navigation
Once you recognize your opportunity is here and you are ready for a change, waste no time, make a plan.
Write your feelings down, this is an absolute must. Not only to document your transition, but to remind yourself daily of why you are moving forward. Get a book, a composition book, or a journal, whatever suits you best. Name it, not some human or pet name, name it something inspiring, something you want to remind yourself every time you see it. I named mine, “Never Stop Trying”, but you need to make it personal. Something like “Feel” or “Be Strong”, ya feel me?
This book represents your new life. It will always be on you, and will go wherever you go. Take it work, the gym, parties, I don’t care. You will need it at the most random times to remind yourself why this part of your life is so important.
The book will be split into three main sections; Principles, Goals, and Objectives. How you order it is up to you, but let me explain what belongs in each section.
My principles are in the back, they are broken up into four very important sections, which I consider the basic set every person should have. Desires, Needs, Values, and Passions. Each is a numbered list of emotions, concepts and items I feel belong in that category.
Desires: What do you want from this Earth, yourself and others?
Needs: What do you need from this Earth, yourself, and others? (I have another right after called material necessities where I list every thing that I need, it’s helpful to not be cluttered during this process)
Values: What do you love about this Earth, yourself, and others.
Passions: Why do you choose to keep living on this Earth?
Writing these down in list format will give you a physical reminder of what you want out of life. Everything that you write down should be from your own thought, don’t write something down that you’re not super confident in. Each list should be on its own separate page, and I would recommend leaving space in-between them in case your list flows onto the next page.
Some overlap between lists is alright. For instance: Love is number one on both my lists for desires and values.
What goes in the list can be either broad concepts like love or specific items like bubblegum. Always remember these lists define your core principles in life, be explicit. As mentioned, break up needs into material and meta so you can differentiate.
I strongly recommend being alone for this initial process. Give yourself some time to think clearly, creatively, and critically on these topics and fill up the pages with as many things as possible. On the other hand, don’t feel bad if your list doesn’t fill the page. Some of my sections only had 5 things listed for a while. You will continually update these lists and add more whenever you need to. And you better write down this book as a need haha.
Once you run out of ideas for additions to your lists on the first run, look them over. Read them and know them, after all, they are you. When you realize another, take a second to write it down. Waste no time, stop whatever you’re doing and put it in the book. The sooner it’s in the book the sooner you can implement it into your goals.
That’s right, you’re going to need to make goals. At least a rough plan on where you want to be in the future. I suggest planning it out as specifically as possible for 5 years down the road, then more general 10-15 years out. Each page in your goals section should be a period of time amounting to a few months all the way to a few years. These time periods are big chunks in your life that will present novel and challenging obstacles to overcome.
I’ll talk about the third section in the post transition phase, because that section grows by the day.
Overall, the initial transition shouldn’t take too long, less than a week I’d say. Of course, you’re not totally in the clear yet, but at this point you should have a good understanding of the general direction you want your life to go. The rest of the transition will include you working toward these goals, keeping in mind the principles you defined for yourself.
Post-Transition: Grinding
The last section will hold the bulk space of the book because you’ll be writing in it everyday. This is where you will write incremental goals on a daily basis. These objectives can be completed in a shorter time frame, and after completion you can cross them off. Think of a running TODO list. Each morning I write down what I want to accomplish that day and think about how that will help me realize my main goal. Another approach to this is utilizing this section as a sort of diary. I don’t think this is as functional since it doesn’t require you to be explicit with your daily intentions. So I would recommend my methodology, but remember to make it your own.
If fitness is one of your desires, take a page or two to create a workout regime. If health is one, take a page to plan out meals for a week. If it’s financial integrity, create a budget. See what I’m saying? This is where the action takes place. Take your principles and goals and create actionable objectives to realize them.
Don’t bullshit this, seriously. Nothing in this book should be a joke or not sincere, don’t lie to yourself let alone others.
Your thought process for this section should be, “What do I want to accomplish today and how will it help me move towards accomplishing my main goals?”
Try and hold yourself accountable, not only for writing in it everyday, but also for finishing the tasks you set for yourself. If you don’t accomplish all your objectives for the day, make sure they are at the top of the list for the next day. If an objective slips for more than a few days, reconsider its importance. What greater goal are you holding up by not doing this smaller one? Is it completely necessary? How can you break it down into smaller goals so you can better track your progress? These sorts of questions can aide you in understanding why you wrote it down in the first place and can help you move forward and accomplish them. For instance, writing down something like “apply for jobs” is futile, make it something like “apply to 5 companies”. SMART goals people.
It’s okay to miss a few days here and there. I encourage taking a few breaks as long as you are doing something you value. Try and limit this though, especially in the beginning. We are trying to build a habit, consistency is of utter importance. The more routine you make your life, the easier it’ll be.
I also use this section to take notes on major events in my life. Try not to clutter this section, but it’s all yours, so do what you want with it. And always do what makes you happy, that’s the goal of this all, so keep it in mind.
Conclusion: Tips and Closing Remarks
Just because you’ve passed the transition, it doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. As you write down goals recognize that each of them will require great strength to complete. Many more hardships are yet to be faced, many will be unplanned. Your general trend will be towards a happier life, but it will still have ups and downs always.
If you catch yourself slipping, not writing in the book daily or not feeling much better, go back through your goals and principles and remind yourself of your why. Convince yourself that going back isn’t an option and the only way forward is by keeping to this book and working hard.
You’re never truly done.
Celebrate major accomplishments, cross things off with a smile. You’re making progress! It’s important to recognize that!
When you run out of pages, celebrate by getting another book and christen it with a new name!
Be sober more. Don’t make excuses for yourself, don’t attempt to escape reality. In order to accomplish this transition you must have a deeply rooted understanding of what is real and what you’re capable of.
Love yourself! Be your greatest advocate, fight for what you believe in and defend this book. Be open to change and alteration of your goals. If something doesn’t feel right, change it.
As I mentioned before leave extra space after your goals and principles. If you change your mind on the goals you want to accomplish, don’t erase or tear out the page. Put an X on the page and write your new plan on the blank pages you gave yourself. Try not to do this too often, because your time is valuable and you want to be working productively towards the right goal.
Learn to be okay with being alone. This one is a tough one, but very important. Throughout your life there will be many times where you feel very alone. Recognizing that this is okay and only temporary will help you not fall into a deep sadness. Know your fears, encourage your hopes, and try to be in control of your emotions. Learn when it’s okay to be sad and when you should be happy. Never suppress your emotions, just try your hardest to understand why you are feeling them. Here’s a poem I wrote on this idea:
Alone is Okay Where in the world do you find yourself now? As you look up and down, left and right. You're alone, but not afraid. Worn, but not tattered. You wait for a message, a response to your call. You get it ... it's you ... and you hear, "Hello?" And that's when you realize, it's just you. Nobody's here to help. And that's okay.
Understand that it is going to be a lot of work. Life is not easy. Embrace the challenge and push forward into the darkness. You are the leader of your life, don’t follow anyone. You may lead with people, but never let anyone control your path. You can do this.
Video:
Trip: 2 Weeks a Nomad
Preface:
If you didn’t already know, I’m living out of my truck as a means to an end. That end is: learning all that I can about the nation, people, and me in order to properly focus my passion. The past two weeks have been filled with many incredible moments and a few terrible ones. Overall, I’ve never lived a happier life, and its getting better every day. I feel free, and I wake up with a smile – reliably. Here is the recap for my first two weeks on the road!
I’m not going to add media to this post because my laptop isn’t the best at video editing, and most everything would be taken out of the streamed video. So, I’ll promise to make a totally sick whole trip recap video that will show you the transition I made (at the end of the trip). It will have music, video, and of course bloopers!
Week 1: Tahoe, Reno, Salt Lake City, Yellowstone
Week one was spent mostly on the west side of the Mississippi. The main struggles involved figuring out a comfortable sleeping situation, and how I was going to eat.
Parking outside somebodies place and hopping into the back of a truck and closing it on yourself is legal, but really weird. So I go to bed late at night, the only problem with that is waking up at dawn. I lost a lot of sleep in the first week because I hadn’t adjusted. The bed itself needed some more cushion so I put all my blankets under me and sleep in my sleeping bag. So far, I’ve been getting great rest.
The only real difficulty I was met with eating was finding an appropriate place to make my food. Essentially, I needed to get over the fact that I’m making food and eating it in some parking lot. I try to cook nearby grass so I can poor out the water when washing. (not onto concrete) I’ve gotten over this and eat well every day. I had some cravings in the beginning because I wasn’t eating enough, but I’ve solved that as well.
The successes were far more abound: it hailed in Tahoe and snowed in Yellowstone, I skated some insane lines in Salt Lake and Reno, and may have a new favorite National Park.
Week 2: Denver/Boulder, St. Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh
Week 2 brought with it it’s own challenges, like finding overnight parking inside a major city and the pains of skating/moving a lot.
Many places like Walmart and Planet Fitness are 24/7 but have signs up in the parking lot stating tow, ticket or boot for overnight parking. I even witnessed a lady with an RV calling the police on a tow operator because no signs were posted in a specific lot. So you have to get creative, and sometimes hiding in plain sight is the only way to go. For the mean time, I’m just trying to keep my vehicle safe and in shape.
I’ve skated in all the towns, and totally wiped out once. (and I caught it on stream!) With that comes some joint pain for traveling anywhere from 5 to 20 miles in a day, it’s manageable but I have been taking a break.
On the bright sides, I’ve met so many new people, and had experiences I never imagined I would. Found some incredible secret spots, fulfilled many of my childhood dreams and made it to the eastern timezone!
CMU has been more than incredible, considering this trip’s only real justification was to visit potential PhD universities, this has been the best place so far. I connected with the CMU Delt Chapter and have already been aided tremendously by my brothers, from a bed to beers and even to program connections. I got to meet with 3 PhD students, the Director of the program (who’s a badass), admissions faculty, and many potential advisers. I’m taking the “be yourself, express your passions, find your way” approach. So far I’m in love with the program, university, and city. I haven’t seen it in winter though 🙂
Up Next: Boston, Seattle, N.Y.
I’m heading to Boston to research MIT and check out Harvard. I also have heard that there are awesome jazz clubs there and NY, so you KNOW I need to check that out.
The reason why Seattle is squeezed in there is because I have an interview with Amazon and they are flying me out for three days. I am beyond excited! Not only to I get to experience a whole new place I’ve never been, but like Amazon – that’s one of the coolest companies around. They are on the cutting edge of so many technologies. I’m pretty sure I’ve dreamed of being a developer there. In all seriousness, I hope I am the right fit for a good team in the company and I get to start work on a great product.
I’m looking forward to streaming more of it too! I missed a few days due to exhaustion and driving, but you can watch me live at twitch.tv/jamescaud. All my videos for past live streams are there too, so check out some of these incredible places I’ve visited!
AI Driving Unemployment – A Cause for Concern
*The title of this post is an intentional pun, however unfunny the topic.*
Overview:
Autonomous vehicles are a hot topic in today’s technical, economic, and social landscape. Over 30 separate companies are actively pursuing some form of autonomous driving application, some more advanced than others. Regardless, with the consumer market biting at any sort of auto-piloting system available, there’s an argument to be made that fully autonomous vehicles are a plausible inevitability. With the gears of capitalism in full torque, it’s more a question of when, than if.
With that in mind, planning for the transition is an unpleasant task for those who wield political power. Unfortunately, not many are actively considering possible avenues of support for those to be affected by this appending unemployment wave. Now, before I go any further, it’s important to realize that predicting timelines for nascent technologies is almost never accurate. For instance, Google predicted its driverless software to be marketable this year (obviously it’s not), probably fueled by some Kurzweil ideology. Nevertheless, this is something we can see coming, and yet the government seems to favor a more reactive approach. Maybe that’s because they’re slow, or maybe it’s negligence. Either way, if no action is taken proactively, we could see 2% of the U.S. workforce wither into the tech induced graveyard. Luckily, some people are researching this very topic.
In March of this year, just six months ago, the Center for Global Policy Solutions (CGPS) released an exhaustive report on the state of AI driving affairs. There is no way I could paraphrase this magnificent piece, so instead I’ll link you and urge a read of the relatively short executive summary. Report
I agree with most of the report, the only thing I believe lacking were more fleshed out alternatives to the potential jobless drivers. After dwelling on the issue myself for many weeks and reading countless opinion pieces as well as statistics, I have a few of my own recommendations. Some coincide with this report, others are stolen from technoeconomists. (I made that word up) Alas, any new idea I thought I had ended up being something that already existed, but would take major alteration to apply to this issue on a grand scale. Okie dokie, enough preface, lets jump right in.
Scary Statistics:
Whenever anyone starts putting numbers to people, I get really sick. If I took anything away from watching The Big Short, it’s that increased unemployment means more than just human suffering, it means death. The figure in the movie is a bit exaggerated and in reference to the world economy. The real figure for american lives lost due to a 1% raise in unemployment is more around 1,500. You may think, “wow that’s only .0005% of our population”, but I think, “Imagine every person you know dying, times 3”. Needless to say, it’s imperative that as a society we do our very best to ensure a graceful transition to a driver-less nation. (Also, I am only focusing on America for many reasons: 1. The report did too, 2. Driving is way different around the world, 3. I have no idea how half of the other nation’s governments even work 4. Starting “small”)
Big picture statistics provided by CGPS estimate that 4.1 million individuals are employed in driving occupations. This includes: 78% delivery and long haul trucking, 14% bus drivers, and 8% taxi/chauffeurs. Of that 4.1 million, 88% are men and 12% are women. Even more terrifying, 97% don’t have a college degree. This proves to be the most challenging statistic because in order to find employment, most drivers will need re-training. Whether that is getting a degree, or learning a new trade, that will be time and money they may not have.
What will most likely happen before any completely autonomous agents are roaming the roads is autopiloted systems with a driver present. This provides a unique opportunity for drivers to learn/re-train and work at the same time. Depending on the quality of the autopilot system, they may be able to spend most of their time watching lectures of some sort. Leaving the refueling, maintenance, and approach/docking procedures to the driver. More on this later.
The report also mentioned specific states that would be at risk, holding a larger percentage of their workforce in the industry. As much as I think this is helpful for state legislatures to make decisions, I’m not going to highlight it here. Many of my recommendations work for both the federal and state level of governance, but I will speak almost exclusively of the benefits reaped from total federal adoption. Sometimes I think the states are more at odds with DC than they should be, seems like they were designed to work together and often do the opposite.
Possible AI Incapabilities:
After consulting with a few truckers (yes I sought out and talked with those to be affected) they all mentioned a few duties they thought would be difficult to automate, ensuring their job security. These included as already mentioned: refueling, delivery to storefront, maintenance, docking/loading/unloading items. One trucker even mentioned a sort of highway robbery scenario where bandits would stand in the road expecting the system to auto-brake and then bust into the truck to steal all the goodies. As much as I agree with these insider opinions, it’s arguable that these tasks are no more difficult than driving itself.
Hopefully, all these new autonomous vehicles will be electric. And “refueling” could mean one of two things: recharging or a battery swap. Wireless charging has been around for many years, but it’s not awesome. (Apple seems to have flip-flopped with their new X device) Tesla, one of the leaders in the field has been designing autonomous wired charging bots and I’m sure will deliver more robust solutions in the future.
So, the car will be able to recharge itself, what about maintenance? This is by far the more challenging obstacle. Ideally all maintenance is done before each trip at the departure location which could be done by either one person, or maybe someday an automated robot. But, many issues may arise along the road that AI drivers could not possibly anticipate. Emergencies like tire blowouts would seemingly have to have some human interaction.
For delivering/docking/loading/unloading, these would be interesting engineering feats to automate, but I believe a lot of ground could be covered if the processes were redesigned with the autonomous car in mind. Say you’re a keg delivery man; instead of having to get out of the truck, open the door, unload the keg and wheel it to the storefront or whatever, the truck was packed so that each keg came out in order of delivery and could be set in a predetermined location. Of course this is a gross over estimation, but reasonable negotiations could be made per industry I imagine.
Lastly, for the highway robbery case, I would suggest something like a lock-down protocol that called the authorities immediately after recognizing` a threat. Maybe the shell of the truck would become magnetized or electrified. I don’t know, it’s a crazy thought in the first place.
Plausible Inevitability:
As I mentioned earlier, it’s safe to say that this technology will come to fruition. It’s our duty to provide assistance to those who will be affected by this change. Something else to consider is the other industries that may be affected. Many people think car ownership will drop dramatically since we will be able to hail cars, so does that mean all car salespeople will be out of jobs too? This is one aspect of the CGPS report that was mostly neglected. It’s important to think of the secondary industries that can be hurt by this appending transition to autonomous vehicles. The 4.1 million jobs may be a gross underestimation if all the affected industries were accounted for. I could speculate, but I’m not fully aware of the implications and the numerous other secondary industries. Other authors mentioned aftermarket part installers, parking clerks, and insurance dealers. It’s hard to say what the full effect will be.
Needless to say, something needs to be done about the issue. When I thought about possible solutions I came up with 6 major categories of possible support methods, they are:
- “Make New Jobs”
- Outlaw/Regulate the Technology
- Wealth Refactoring
- Workforce Redistribution
- Better Federal Social Support Systems
- Fundamentally Redefining Work
I will discuss each in detail in the following section.
Alternatives:
“Make New Jobs”
I put this in quotes because it’s something many economists preach as the best solution to tech induced unemployment. In the past decades this has certainly been true, and will somewhat be in the near future. But the important thing to realize is the rate of creation. Currently job creation has stagnated. And after witnessing the mass unemployment wave in 2008, it should be obvious that it’s not always easy to get a new job. Most new jobs are in small technology based firms or self-employed entrepreneurs. The report mentions the necessity for entrepreneur education in secondary school. This, along with many other things, would be important to teach to our youth. Maybe some day I will write a post on the necessary changes to America’s education system, but for now I don’t think it will be enough.
New jobs nowadays most often require a college education, which is something these drivers don’t have. What I think this should mean is expanding the workforce in a few select industries, construction being one of them. It will be a while until we automate the building and repairing of our domestic infrastructure, ensuring job security. Of course, this still requires a targeted skill set that the drivers may not have. But instead of relying on new jobs to spring out of nowhere, we should target markets that are currently experiencing worker deficits. More on this later.
Outlaw/Regulate the Technology
An obvious way to ensure these individuals won’t lose their jobs is to completely outlaw the technology. Not only is this morally repugnant, this is counterproductive to any policy ideology. When visiting Oregon I was disgusted to find out that a law passed in 1951 prohibited me from pumping my own gas. This law has two main justifications, safety and jobs. That’s bullshit. Not only has nozzle/pump technology been greatly advanced in the past 60 years, but those jobs hurt the economy more than help. Costing citizens extra pennies at the pump to pay for a service they can 100% do themselves.
In general, a law should never be passed to protect jobs, only to create more purposeful ones. So, outlawing the technology to protect these jobs is bad practice, but regulation is a necessity. Similar to how there are pump regulations ensuring safety, these AI systems need to be strictly regulated in order to insure public safety. Extensive field tests are necessary, and an independent committee should be formed to create them. Manufactures and the public should be consulted to find an agreeable form of autonomous driving regulation. Let’s make sure this is as bi-partisan and unbiased as possible. After all, vehicles are the most deadly weapon we’ve ever made based on the sheer numbers.
So yeah, I know government is already way to big, but we need another agency. ADC, Autonomous Driving Committee, or something, to police these up and coming tech giants, create comprehensive regulation and administer the tests and data collection of these systems. Luckily, it’s on the list of things to vote on, but missed the summer recess. Hopefully they hash things out when they return.
Wealth Refactoring
This without a doubt will need to happen. Now I’m not asking to abolish capitalism for socialism, but think about the increased profit to be expected by these trucking/taxi companies. Trucking companies spend around 30% paying their employees, that would mean an immediate 30% profit boost. Not to mention the increased hours of operation allowed by the technology, boosting the total profits even more. Companies like Uber take around 20% from their drivers. With autonomous agents, that would be a 500% profit increase. Not only should these companies pay for necessary infrastructure updates (if any), they should expect to be taxed more. Those returns should go directly to those programs dedicated to helping the recently unemployed. I’m not suggesting gutting their profits to match pre-AI figures, but a fair percentage should be agreed upon.
Workforce Redistribution
As mentioned in the Outlaw/Regulate section this is a must. The important questions are how, where, and when. (who, what, why is obvious at this point) I haven’t thought of all the possible industries, nor all possible avenues of opportunity. These are merely my thoughts and ideas after reading many books on the subject and consulting with some of the data.
Instead of looking at the workers first, lets look at the job shortages in america. Its important to look at job necessity trends as well as current need to properly estimate the lacking job markets in 20-30 years. But most economists agree across pretty much all developed nations that the three things we will need more workers in are construction, engineering/manufacturing, and caretakers. The workers should have all the choice in what they want to do, but the government should entice these industries in some form. Not only that, but we especially don’t want workers going into programs that will waste their time and money getting a degree that doesn’t award them an income.
Construction workers are needed because a much of our infrastructure is decaying. Engineers and manufacturers are needed because we need to keep developing solutions to scientific and technology based problems. And care takers because of all the soon to be very old people. The government can sponsor work placement programs that host educational content and guidance on the importance and usefulness of these careers.
Next up is to think of how to do this, Jerry Kaplan, an optimistic economist, (yeah they exist) had the idea of a job mortgage. Companies would agree to hire an individual if they passed some educational qualifier, and the individual would take out a loan against their future paycheck. Thiscould be a financial tool for the individual and a motivator for qualification programs to create a competitive learning environment. The companies get tax write-offs, the banks get interest, the workers get a new job: somehow everybody gets paid.
The report mentioned an increase in apprenticeship, which wouldn’t be too bad. But what I think their best suggestion was, and this is something quite controversial, lowering the cost of a college education. The government pays more for not only these workers who want to gain a degree, but young individuals too. After all, those are the groups facing harshest unemployment. Fuck it, even if they study music, at least they are able to contribute to society again. It’s of dire importance to find another ‘thing’ to do, even if it is not going to give them income (I have a solution to this later). Because the data for middle aged unemployment is already getting scary.
Last is when, and this question varies the most due to the proposed timeline being so fuzzy. In my opinion, I believe that there will be a period of regulation and testing amounting to at least 5 years before the government deems them safe enough to be truly unmanned. This may have already started. Even after that, the companies may stick with a driver is they choose to do so. Not for long I bet, maybe 15 more years until human driving is outlawed entirely (in America). So after a truly revolutionary and complete level 5 autonomous application is developed, 5 years with a mandated driver, then 15 years after humans are not allowed. I truly expect a 20 year cycle from driver to driverless. In the 5 years of a mandated diver, the workers should spend time thinking about potential exit strategies, and maybe even start introductory courses in the subject of their choosing. Many things can be learned online today, and if the driver was only needed for a fraction of the time, they could listen to lectures/watch videos when they could spare the opportunity. This would greatly soften the blow to the transition. Then hopefully immediately after they get laid off by the company, they can start pursuing their new career path. Or maybe the companies work with the employees to transition immediately on a scheduled date.
Better Federal Social Support Systems
The report mentioned the need for automatic enrollment in services like unemployment insurance and medicaid. As of now, these programs also need a massive funding increase. Today in America, only 25% of those who applied and qualified for UI were given it, pretty messed up right? We pay so much in taxes, yet so much of it goes to useless purposes, and year after year budgets get cut for the most important services.
I propose the need to change dramatically the way we provide for the old, poor, sick and defeated. First off, nobody should have to live in squalor. Nobody should be denied a service they qualify for and need. Americans should have a standard of living higher than any other nation. How do we do this? We re-imagine social support provided by the government.
Social security is probably the greatest thing that America has ever implemented, in fact it’s also the most reliable. The fact that it is still helping people 80 after its inception is frankly remarkable. But it’s failing. The baby boomers are growing older, and birth rates have been at all time lows for decades. This means there are no longer enough workers to pay for all the recipients, and people are growing older than ever before. My grandma suggests taking more from workers to compensate, I suggest we do something completely different. The first thing you can do is remove the income cap, which always sounds downright illegal. The second is progressive basic income (PBI).
Before you puke on your screen, and cast me aside like the socialist I am, heard me out. Progressive basic income is very similar to social security, and would not replace it, but instead be supplementary to the service. Slightly different than universal basic income, which grants every individual the same monthly benefits, progressive basic income is a calculated needs based government supplement. It would never be enough to live off of exclusively, however nor was social security but over 33% of its recipients make it so. When it comes to the very poor and maybe homeless, rich people say “get a job”, then I say, how can they do that without X. PBI could give these people the opportunity to get that X, whether it transportation, clothes, or food. The reason I favor progressive vs. universal is because many people don’t need this, and their share of UBI could go towards the PBI share of the very unfortunate. PBI, automatic UI, and modified Medicare/Medicaid would cushion any job loss, not just those lost due to trucking.
Fundamentally Redefining Work
This section is reserved for the last because it is the most radical and least time sensitive. I’ve many a time imagined a world where less than the majority of people work a conventional job as we know it today. Would half of our population be on the streets? No, because at this point we would have enacted many of the above policies and probably more. Nevertheless people still need something to do, and should be compensated in some form for whatever it is. So what could a solution for this be?
Community service crowd-sourced income. Sites like JustServe and GiveGab sort of offer the services I’m talking about. My ideology is that the government would run a service like this in which every non-profit and interested person could make an account. Normally the government is crap at hosting online services like this, but I can imagine a day where they hire more software developers to create and maintain a platform like this. Or maybe they’ll just contract it out. Either way, this would be a way for people to do things on a day to day basis, get them involved in their community and provide small monetary sustenance. Where’s the money come from you ask? I had the same question when looking at these already existing services. The service providers aren’t themselves non-profits right? It mainly comes from organization membership fees, which in turn means it comes from government stimuli to the non-profit, and donations. If the government took out the middle man, they could charge organizations less, and also pay the workers a bit.
I know it’s odd, community service for money, but you have to realize the difference between volunteer and community service. One of which you usually get a reward other than that “good feeling”. It may be far-fetched, but this would pay huge dividends for public good and increased quality of life. Communities would be safer and more happy. The logistics would need to be discussed and argued about, but the main idea seems pleasant to me. Say its 2040, I’m unemployed and receiving welfare checks that pay for my modest lifestyle. But I want to get more involved with the people around me and make some extra money because I want to start a new hobby. If a popular service was in place, I could wake up in the morning, sign up for an event, work a shift and get a slight increase on my next month’s check. An app would track this for me, and have all the tools for my welfare need. I say slight increase thinking a few dollars, but it would all depend on the job. Organizations could set all sorts of settings on the app for who could do the work and for how much, and the service would automatically grant or deny the job opportunity based on the percentage of total budget allotted to the organization over a specific period. Remember, this is when more than a majority of capable workers are unemployed.
Conclusion:
I may not have covered all my bases, but I hope I’ve at least convinced you of the importance of this problem. The need for solutions is there, and time is always ticking. We as a society need to recognize the issues involved with transitioning to a driverless nation and demand that our governments act proactively to solve them. From regulation to worker redistribution, this issue needs a compilation of efforts to ensure gracefulness. If done correctly, the building blocks could be set in place for other potential AI induced industry disruptions. Lets try not to have another recession, let’s take care of our people. Comment below your curiosities and arguments.
YouTube Treasures: Domain of Science
One of my favorite YouTube channels, Domain of Science, released a brand new video: Map of Computer Science. And it’s amazing.
Channel’s Purpose
The channel caught my interest a few months ago when they started releasing fully comprehensive surveys of modern scientific study. For an individual interested in the pursuit of science and knowledge this is the exact type of content you yearn for. Now, for many of their other mapping videos, such as mathematics and physics, many of the discussed sub-fields I had no idea about other than the fact they existed. The brief explanation that the narrator adds on each subject helps the viewer understand the general purpose and it’s connections to other sub-fields. This relational teaching style is unfortunately often neglected in formal education. For individuals looking for possible career paths or passions, all they have to do is watch the video and pause it the moment their mouth drops or head tilts with curiosity. I highly suggest subscribing to the channel, their content is clear, concise, and beautifully graphical.
Map of Computer Science
This most recent video made me quite happy. It’s one thing to go to university, take all the mandatory classes, and attempt to piece together the segmented material. It’s a whole other thing to see them all together on one map. I linked it to my university’s computer science Facebook page, and it was the first time I posted there. You can kinda tell how much I liked it just by that. The reason I loved it so much is that I had been planning on making some sort of similar content, but knew I’d never be able to do so as professionally. (I sorta started with the For What it’s Worth: My College Education post) Stepping though each part of the video, I felt confident in my knowledge of the subject area and that I’d be able to talk about it for hours. In fact, I did so with my parents. This video reinforced my education as a computer engineer. Having such a great breadth of knowledge in a huge, ever-growing field as computer science is something I truly treasure. I feel that my bachelors degree program achieved an educational level of success unrecognized to me and many other graduates. With videos like this, computer engineers/scientists can more or less examine their personal knowledge scope. For some students it’s not important to know all the theory and history. But for student’s like me, it’s vital to learn about the field from day one to present and every single subject in between. Not until every piece is visualized can the full picture be understood. Confidence in one’s previous knowledge is essential in the pursuit of learning, and this video gave me confidence. Now a choice needs to be made, focus on a single sub-field and become an expert, or use my breadth to achieve advancements outside the field. Unfortunately, I can’t just flip a coin on that one.
Trip: High Sierra Trail and Structures
After numerous injuries I finally got back into the woods, solo hammock backpacking as prescribed. I wanted to spend time thinking about what my next step really should be and what the main reasons for human perseverance are. I also tasked myself with exploring a curiosity of mine that has been brewing since my trip to Europe, why do old buildings still stand today? To quench this curiosity I brought with me an Elon Musk book recommendation called Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down by J.E. Gordon, a dead Englishman.
High Sierra
The beginning of this trail starts off to a very breathtaking start, within a few miles you are greeted with a view of the entire sequoia lower valley. After 12 miles there is Bear Paw Campsite, there I ran into Cal Poly Ag Staff whom were surprised to see a recent grad out on a weekday. Excuse my cheesy selfie.
Hamilton Lakes
Up maybe 5 miles from the campsite was my primary destination, Hamilton Lakes. This site offered breathtaking views and awesome swimming/tanning (burning). After a day hike and dinner, I decided to call it the next day meaning a long hike home. I woke up at 5 to dear eating my hat, started walking, stumbled upon a mountain lion and two bears (which luckily ran off) and hiked a strong 18 out.
Technology as a Storyteller
I realized many a thing on this trip, one of them being the incredibly influential power of hope and fear, another being the understanding of structures.
I spent more than my trip worth of time reading this book and was happy to finally learn and understand the beauty of some of these insane structures I’d seen in Europe. More importantly I gained an appreciation for the science of building, which in itself is a marvelous storyteller of human history. I’ve always loved learning about the history of man through his many great inventions. It was not until this book that I realized the great science/technology that is materials and structures and elasticity. I learned about stress, strain, tension, compression, strength, stiffness, shear, torsion, cantilever and fixed point beams, trusses, thrust lines, cracks, crumbles, and many other failures. Most importantly I learned about the correlations between man-made and evolutionary-made materials and structures. Lastly, I gained far more appreciation for all the architects and builders out there who continue to push both the theoretical and aesthetic boundaries.
Final Thought
The very last part of this book, whilst reading at the beach, was very dark. The author was writing during a time of little architectural inspiration. He wrote about the duties of an engineer and how efficiency and aesthetics are common day trade-offs when they shouldn’t be. One quote that is pretty un-relevant to structures but relevant to the times is, “Although we may justly accuse modern engineers of philistinism, nearly all of them do cling to certain very important values which are unfashionable and unpopular in a permissive age. The chief of these are objectivity and responsibility. Engineers have to deal, not only with people and all their quirks and weaknesses, but also with physical facts. One can sometimes argue with people, and it is not difficult to deceive them; but it is of no use to argue with a physical fact. One cannot bully it or bribe it or legislate against it or pretend that the truth is something different or that the thing never happened at all. Laymen and politicians may create what fantasies they choose, but, for the engineers, ‘It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.’ Essentially, these people’s stuff must work, and go on working, safely and economically.” Maybe we should have an engineer for president?
For What It’s Worth: AI and Government
Introduction:
My two favorite things in the whole world, Artificial Intelligence and Government! What is their value, and what sort of interdisciplinary cooperation is necessary to make the world a better place for everybody? I decided to write this now because of a talk Elon Musk gave to a set of America’s Governors where he discussed his business’s plans, the global energy crisis, and the dangers of AI, here is the video. He mentioned again the need for a regulatory agency, or something similar, to ensure the creation of benevolent human-value aligned AI. Which is something I firmly believe is necessary and even want to make a career out of. In this piece I will highlight major advancements in technology and propose significant changes to the way we humans view public policy and governance. There are four sections: AI, Government, AI Helping Government, Government Helping AI. Some definitions and clarifications before I begin:
- AI is any intelligent software and/or hardware combination that operates somewhere on the scale of cognition between dust and humans but is not a living being.
- Government is in most cases meant to be the USA federal government, unless further specified. State institutions are often very similar in structure and thus can stand to benefit from the same recommendations.
- I’m not an expert in either of these fields yet, so read with scrutinous eyes. My opinion is not just my own, but is mine to own.
Let’s dive in!
AI:
Known to many as HAL 9000, Skynet, or Watson, artificial agents are forced to live with the cheesy names we humans give them long after their heyday. Now, two of those AI’s mentioned are fictional, the same two are also malevolent. The third, Watson, is real, and has already started saving lives, literally. The research and development of intelligent systems and algorithms has always been shrouded by public misunderstanding, mostly due to Hollywood’s sensationalism of terror inducing AI. Granted, many scenarios portrayed in film and television are not incredibly far fetched, but they are still too shaky a forecast of what is to come. One thing is for sure, the general populous needs to learn more about the improvements and breakthroughs happening today in artificial intelligence. Their livelihood could potentially be effected by a sweeping wave of new innovations targeting the most automatable parts of civilian life. As a paranoid silicon valley engineer once quoted, “I don’t know of a single job that doesn’t have some Y Combinator startup desperately trying to code it out of existence.” To understand the state of affairs, it’s important to break down the large field of AI and examine each subset’s value and momentum.
A good breakdown of the major components that make up today’s AI is provided by an article by Deloitte on AI’s potential impact on government, posted here. They are:
- Expert/Rule-Based Systems
- Natural Language Processing (Speech Recognition/Machine Translation)
- Computer Vision
- Robotics
- Machine Learning
Of course, there is often multiple pieces used at once by any one project, but these are the pieces themselves. I’ll mention briefly the importance of each and what is happening to develop them further.
Also, this has nothing to do with what is commonly referred to as Artificial General Intelligence or Artificial Super Intelligence, since those are theoretical states of intelligence. Hypothesizing the future state of a budding technology is both naive and dangerous. I present only information that is either in development currently or already created. However, this is not to say that the development of intelligent, potentially self-replicating software isn’t an incredible technology, it is and may be a top 5 human invention. Every powerful technology has its even share of potential harm and benefit. You just have to try to realize the full impact an enabling development like that has, then try to guarantee the maximum positive impact in reality.
So let’s talk about modern day AI.
Expert Systems:
Our knowledge of automated systems is almost entirely due to expert systems. In the early days of AI research many scientists thought they could create algorithms that worked in a specific domain by coding in a large breadth of expert knowledge. This was just before the second AI winter, a period of time where funding dropped off due to a lack of commercial viability. At the time (late 80’s) over 1 billion dollars was being invested into the promise that AI would be “solved” within a generation. These systems were not a complete bust, many just couldn’t process data quick enough to give a valuable answer. Others simply didn’t have enough knowledge programmed in. Most chat bots or automated telephone system are an example of these expert systems in service. Not many people enjoy a robot picking up the phone instead of a human being, but the fact of the matter is that millions of man hours and company dollars are saved every year because of these programs. So however unaesthetic these systems are, they demand respect because as much as you hate having to click through to a get a human assistant, you probably hate more having to wait on hold for hours.
Natural Language Processing (NLP):
Without a doubt, the most important human invention of all time was one of the first, language. When you consider language a man-made technology, it’s obvious how much you take it for granted. Being able to efficiently communicate ideas to each other is what fostered the growth of communities and enabled us as a species to speed up our own evolution. Written and spoken language set us apart from any other animal. All technological advancement ever would not have been possible without the verbalization of ideas, and then the passing along of those ideas to others in the form of writing. Now, thousands of years later, it seems we are finally going full circle with the mission of teaching computers how to communicate like humans. We are trying to teach a man-made technology how to use another man-made technology. NLP, generally, is the attempt to understand the rules and norms of natural human language. There are two main sub-fields: speech recognition and machine translation.
Speech recognition is the transcribing of spoken language to written language. The other way around isn’t as hard since almost all the rules for speech are written down for different languages. Speech recognition is difficult because humans often speak with ambiguity intentionally, meaning of words are implied with context. Context is never easy for computers to understand. Take sarcasm for instance, software is super great at understanding sarcasm. (lol jk)
Machine translation is the science of taking a set of text in one language and turning it into the same text in a different language. For small string lengths this is not as challenging, but holding context after translation of a large document is near impossible. Methods for these NLP tasks has changed over the years, originally using a bottom up approach of breaking down language into sounds and smaller sub-word structures then building sentences and paragraphs from those sounds or words. Nowadays, a lot of this is done with the help of machine learning off of human transcribed/translated data. This research is fairly dominated by Google, since a Google search really is just understanding a natural language query and returning the most desired information. Plus Google Translate is the most used translation service on the web. Recent developments are only a few months old, and their algorithms are even creating a new language to help understand them all?
Computer Vision:
Similar to how NLP is focused on hearing and understanding human ideas, computer vision is focused on seeing and understanding the world around us. This, also like NLP, relies heavily on machine learning for progress. Some older techniques utilized multiple types of cameras and sensors, but there is a big move in industry towards only using regular 3-color photographs. The idea that many researchers have in their head is, “If the brain and eyes can do it with lenses, rods, cones, and some back-end processing, so can we.” (sorta) Take for instance autonomous vehicles, in the beginning of their development, many companies achieved the feat with an array of LIDAR and motion tracking cameras. Now, many of the forerunners are using only cameras and learning off that data alone. Facebook has one of the largest steaks in this technology because it’s widely used as a image sharing platform (especially with the purchase of Instagram). They implement facial recognition software to auto tag your friends and you in pictures, and now are moving toward even more robust capabilities. Soon, labeling all sorts of objects in moving images will be possible. Thanks to the incredible ground work done at Stanford on a project called ImageNet, Facebook is leading a computer vision revolution.
Robotics:
This is truly where AI becomes visual. Advances in robot manufacturing to create human-like bodies for these intelligent systems may be a large step in the wrong direction, but not many people really want that anyway. Currently the cutting edge of AI and robotics is taking place on the eastern hemisphere. As western cultures continue to be timid accepting robots into daily life, countries like Japan are welcoming them. All over the developed world more people are getting older and living longer. The average age of many countries is trending up, this means that there is going to be a higher demand for care-givers for old people. In places where immigration is not an option, the only answer is robotics. Autonomous cars can also be considered robots. I don’t pay much attention to robotics because I think the most important AI will be almost entirely software based and on devices whose primary use is shared with the AI. Like phones.
Machine Learning:
Without a doubt machine learning will revolutionize the way we view intelligence and the way we think about learning. This sub-field can be broken down into smaller subsets: Supervised, Unsupervised, and Reinforcement Learning. Each of these has their applications, whether it’s grouping similar things (clustering), or classifying objects (classification), machine learning is all about taking data and recognizing patterns. If the data is labeled, the algorithm has some insight to learn off of. If there are no labels, the algorithm seeks to gain insight from realizing all examples. What I think is the most potentially groundbreaking sub-field is deep reinforcement learning. This is where an artificial neural network is trained on live streaming data and is tasked with some optimization function. When you think about human learning abstractly, this seems nearly exactly the same. Advancements in this field are shared by almost all tech companies since the boom of deep learning in 2016. But the company with the most gusto right now would probably be Deepmind, since they started the craze with AlphaGo. These people are pushing to create AGI, artificial general intelligence, and they are very clearly on the right path.
AI scientists are feverishly innovating, trying to build on past inventions to create new marketable algorithms. Different companies are interested in similar tools, so there is some communication, but not much. Some companies are starting to request patents on certain machine learning technologies. I’m all for science and the discovery of new tools and technologies, but there seems to be something missing, right . . . ethics. There are many engineers working very hard to create incredible systems, so many that the philosophers are having a hard time keeping up.
AI Ethics:
There are many non-profit organisations working toward the goal of formalizing AI research and creating a set of standards to govern development. There are a lot more thorny problems when it comes to the development of AI software, many of them centering around what sort of minimizing/maximizing function is morally right and aligned with human values. But much of the AI ethics discussion is also dominated by the idea of mass human unemployment. I’ll talk more about this is a later section, but let me just say this now, we as a society need to talk about what is right and wrong when it comes to introducing a new technology to this world. AI has the potential to both destroy and beautify this universe, the more people dedicated to finding how each scenario plays out the better.
Government:
Never before has American government been so broken, corrupt, and fraudulent. It’s time for a new new deal. There needs to be a huge focus shift. Right now, the administration and congress are more focused on increasing the private sector’s good, than the public sector. Our president would rather guarantee the success of a wealthy coal CEO than the livelihood of millions of unborn children. And our congress would rather fill the pockets of their allies, than develop law for the public good. Money speaks many volumes higher than sense does in DC. And all trust in the system and its contributors has been dropping significantly since January 2017. The american people were desperate for change, sick of politician’s lies and failed promises, but in the end were all conned. Both parties are to blame, the DNC ruined their chances when they unjustly snuffed out Bernie, and the GOP should have never given Trump the light of day. Now everyone suffers, everyone but the already rich. Wealth disparity will only get worse in a Trump America.
Alright, rant aside government has a couple main functions that everybody agrees on. Government is needed to defend and protect its citizens, create fair laws and just punishments, and foster the community of a nation by investing in transportation, education, agriculture, science, and many more. The reason why every kid growing up in the 60’s and 70’s wanted to be an astronaut was because we put a man on the moon. Government should fund inspiring sciences, it’s odd to think about, but wouldn’t it be nice if our government also provided motivation for young people? Kids nowadays don’t dream as big because they are not exposed on a grand scale to anything other than celebrities and pro atheletes. But why does everything seem so broken anyway? Lets explore that question.
Misrepresentation:
Probably the most obvious reason for the apparent disconnect between government officials and their constituents is misrepresentation. Our 115th US congress, the 535 elected officials that are supposed to represent the over 330 million people living in America, are not like us. Lets just look at gender, race, and age for a moment. Here are Congress’ stats: 80% male, 20% female, 7% Hispanic, 9% African-American, 3% Asian-American, 81% white, average age: 58 years old. Here are America’s stats: 50% male, 50% female, 16% Hispanic, 12% African-American, 5% Asian-American, 64% white, average age: 38 years old. If those numbers aren’t enough here are the numbers on wealth: members of congress average net worth is just over 1 million dollars when the average for american households is around 60 thousand dollars. These are only a few statistics showing the lack of diversity and misrepresentation, others such as religion and education draw a larger divide. I think it is important to have wise individuals creating laws for a society, but those wise individuals need to be nested in reality. Perfect democratic representation is probably impossible, but what we have is nowhere even close.
Agency Expansion:
The framers of the constitution would probably not be super stoked about how the government is looking nowadays. Separation of powers is shot. Everybody complains about bureaucratic red-tape and how slow things move in government, but it’s no surprise when you look at how complicated the agency landscape is. I mean, have you ever even heard of Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board? The president has more power than ever before, having the capability to nominate/replace individuals for all of these major government rolls. If a president were truly corrupt, they would just nominate all their friends to these rolls once elected, or even worse the people who donated the most during the election. Oh wait, shit. I’m not saving that all government agencies are a bad thing, but I do think that there is a lot of fat to be trimmed in the administration and its agencies. The power that they have is derived from the executive branch, but the executive branch should have the least power.
Spending:
One of the most difficult things that our government has to do is figure out who gets what share of the taxes. Luckily the congress can’t raise their own paychecks easily, but they do need to decide who gets what. Remember when the government shutdown and everybody lost their mind in 2013? That’s because they couldn’t agree to where the money went (house republicans hated ACA). They couldn’t vote on an fair budget. As hard as I know this process to be, I think it could be made significantly easier if one thing changed: de-funding defense. Every year the “defense” budget increases. America is a country that was built off of conflict, the only reason why we are considered a world power is because we didn’t go bankrupt fighting the Nazi’s on our own turf. Ever since the end of WWII and the dissolution of Secretary of War into the Secretary of Defense, money flow has increased. Over half of the US federal discretionary spending is spent on the military, more than education, agriculture, science, technology, energy and transportation combined. NASA and the EPA are being decimated under the Trump Administration. The majority of taxpayer dollars goes into programs like medicare, medicaid and social security, I recognize, but those reapportionment’s deserve another conversation entirely. Seriously, when 17 billion dollars is less than a percent of the US budget, I’m sure the Military can do without its total of 13%.
Reactivity:
The final point I wanted to bring up when talking about the functionality of the american federal system is the way it makes change. For all of it’s history, the government has enacted a majority of reactive policies. For instance, the Federal Aviation Administration didn’t exist until over 50 years after the first manned flight. (However there was small regulation committee created in the late 20s) It’s practically impossible for the federal judiciary to act proactively since they can only make rulings on cases that are brought to them. The congress and executive branches have more potential to pass and influence proactive legislature. The reason why I am bringing this up is simple, for government to stay useful, they need to be adaptable. In this age of incredibly fast technological development the american government has had to start acting proactively to maintain it’s competitive advantage over adversaries. I mean, take even the space race and nuclear arms race for instance. Nowadays most of government proactivity is seen in cyber warfare. Since before NATO added cyber to the domains of war America has been attacking and defending itself from cyber attacks. Many times throughout America’s history there has been a necessity to use or regulate a technology that is in it’s early stages of development. The ability to recognize this before full development has always given America an advantage. Technology isn’t the only thing that is moving faster, all of human life seems to be speeding up. So either the government accelerates its functions tremendously, or they start devoting more time to creating more proactive policy, or both hopefully. Technologies like renewable energy, advanced bio-engineering, and AI need proactive policy, whether that means grants or regulations depends on the benefits and dangers.
AI Helping Government:
Both state and national government could use some work when it comes to efficiency. In the Deloitte article I linked earlier, the one that highlighted the different genre’s of modern day AI, they talk at length of ways we could utilize software to speed up government processes. Not only could many processes be sped up with new technology, but many services could be partially automated with already built technology. There has been a trend in the private sector that sees all sorts of different companies transitioning towards a more tech dense environment modelling the numerous software companies that have utilized their computer science and business expertise to create the most efficient workplace possible. The government should do the same. One of Deloitte’s studies followed a child protection service’s employee and found out that more than a third of their day was spent just on paperwork. Having an AI-augmented government would speed up processes and save the taxpayer money.
This may be the the only positive note coming out of the woodwork of the Trump Administration, the new formation of the American Technology Council. This council is made up of some of the most famous Silicon Valley CEOs with the mission of revolutionizing the government’s information technology and cybersecurity. But it’s going to take a lot more than just the top 20 tech CEOs to take care of such a huge problem. There needs to be a full agency or department dedicated to exploring each federal position and whether or not it would be viable, valuable, and vital to automate a portion of it. This agency would not be viewed as the bad guys, they would not be taking people’s jobs away. In fact, they would be seeking solutions to problems that these workers have voiced for years. They would be giving them their job back in a sense, because most jobs would have more time to dedicate to “mission-aligned” tasks.
GovTech Singapore:
Only one nation has an agency dedicated to bringing it’s government into the information age: Singapore. Here’s a quote from the man in charge of the agency, “How do we look at every aspect of our lives and our public sector services and make sure that where there’s an opportunity for that service, product, or experience to be enabled by technology we do so maximally. Where there’s an opportunity to reduce friction and increase efficiency, we do so maximally.” I love this quote, spoken like a true scientist. Singapore is a small city-state-nation near Malaysia and Indonesia, and have only been a country for a little over 50 years. But just in that small amount of time they have transitioned from an undeveloped nation into one of the world leaders in education, health care, and quality of life. They even just passed America on the UN Human Development Index. But how could they do all this in such a short amount of time? Some experts say it’s the pride of the people, others say it’s due to the increasing acceptance and use of technology. While I’m sure it’s a combination of the two, I care more about how they used technology to spring forward past many nations 10 times as old. How did they make this transition in one generation? By caring about the kids. The government has invested large sums into teaching young children the important skills they need for a successful life in the 20th century. They learn sequencing and coding from preschool on, with the curriculum getting more and more complex as they grow older. Even more so, they consider immediate student feedback. If Singapore is different from every other nation because of one thing, it would be their insentient desire to improve the living environment of generations to come. By creating this agency, Singapore hopes to bring positive data analytics and information processing automation to their public sector employees. Not only improving the quality of life of the workers, but also all of the citizens that they interface with. Then they instill their future leaders with the knowledge they need to continue to improve the society. Doesn’t sound that hard right? Well, Singapore only has 5.5 million inhabitants, so there are some scaling problems if adapted to America.
Federal Technology Agency:
I propose that a new agency be created under the president, this agency will be tasked with a similar mission as GovTech in Singapore: to maximize efficiency in government jobs with the proper implementation of technology. This agency would report to the president on the current state of every other department’s information technology landscape, and where improvement can be made. This agency can then recommend, to other agencies, actions that can be taken to reduce friction in operations and alleviate stress on behalf of the workers. More over, the Federal Technology Agency would work alongside other government technology organizations such as the OSTP to research further advancements in technology and promote development competition. This agency will use it’s budget to pay its workers, and auction contracts to companies that can create and maintain technologies devoted to augmenting government processes. Similar to what this company does. We as a society are entering a new digital age, one where information is bountiful but often neglected. If not neglected we as a people can transcend the drudgery of data and work with what we are naturally better at understanding, people. This agency would create a metric calculating potential technological impact to determine which department or agency needs the most improvement. From there, they can start working on how to relieve pressure. This would be a medium to large agency, comprising of executives, managers, automation engineers, economists, human resource managers, and many other fields so that each department scrutinized by the agency would have a fair judgement on what could improve. The short term goal of the agency would be to revamp the government’s IT. The long term goal would be to aide research and development of better, more augmenting technologies. Someday, no one will have to work, but until that day let’s make everybody’s job easier and more fun. Not to mention the amount of money this agency would be saving all of the taxpayers.
Government Helping AI:
For the content you probably skipped all the other stuff to read, you first have to read this: government needs AI to work more efficiently, but government also needs to control the future development of AI. When I say control, I don’t mean that we need another Manhattan Project for AI. First and foremost, artificial intelligence should never be utilized as a weapon, it may augment warfare, but never used directly as a weapon. There are many fundamental problems with artificially intelligent systems, questions concerning who has control and what are good motives, that haven’t been answered correctly yet. Of course this is a new field, but there is a huge problem with this field: money. The problem isn’t a lack of money, but the over incentivization of money. Companies like Google and Amazon are duking it out right now trying to create even more cutting edge software to outperform competitors. As much as I am a capitalist, I’m also a realist, and that sort of fuel for development could lead to unforeseen accidents. You’d think after the 2010 high frequency trading crash everyone would realize that making AI compete against each other is a recipe for disaster. But just like how the mutual funds kept competing, these tech companies will too: because it’s a business. There are two ways the federal government can help the development of benevolent AI: grants and regulations.
Grants:
A lot of the funding for artificial intelligence development comes from the already wealthy silicon valley CEOs. Those who see its value and understand the power that comes with it. This needs to change. As everybody in the industry has noted, research is moving from academia to the private sector. This to me has a lot more negative affects than positive ones. Academia research has always been more transparent than private company research. When the secrets have a dollar sign attacked to it, they are much more important to keep. But that is the opposite of what we need when we are moving forward with the develop of AI. I propose that the american government greatly increase the budget for science and technology research and use it to not only contract companies to build software for the government, but also provide more grants to promising AI research. This could be done under the umbrella of the previously proposed new Federal Technology Agency. With the money also comes an understanding that the government wants to know what you’re up to. These grants would not just be buying a ticket to the magic show, but also a behind the scenes VIP explanation of all the tricks done. The agency should have the expertise available to understand the magic and relay that information to others and make the developments understandable to all. Grants would be given to research groups in both academia and the private sector. These grants will help the research organization hire more talent, and motivate the completion of projects. It helps the government by providing the agency with much needed valuation of progress. The agency will already have a basic road map of where it wants research to go and where not. If any grant recipient starts along the wrong path, the government will know about it sooner rather than later, or at least before it’s too late. Currently the only funding for research given out by the federal government is under the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. There needs to be more than just grants.gov for us as a nation to improve faster, and we need to keep up.
Regulation:
Nobody likes to be controlled, I get that, but nobody wants to die to nuclear fallout or an avoidable plane crash. Consumers expect their products and services to be safe. So when a company lets them down, it really hurts. As many people, perhaps, already have a unfair negative outlook on AI, making sure that companies deploying artificial agents do so safely and wisely is of the government’s utmost concern. No technology or research needs to be stifled when good regulation is done. If anything, regulation should focus organizations on what is the fair way of operating. Regulation is mainly necessary in the field of AI because of the danger it poses to the general public. The danger is not yet realized by the public, and even worse the engineers. Software is biased, because humans are biased. It’s going to take a lot of work to insure the creation of an unbiased, secure system. Organizations like the Future of Life Institute are actively thinking about how we as a society can promote the development of beneficial AI. They recently held a conference of AI research elites that had a goal of creating a list of “must-follow” principles voted yes on by at least 90% of the attendance. This list can be found here. It outlines three areas of principles: research issues, ethics and values, and long-term issues. I encourage you all to read them carefully because they are obviously well thought out. Each is very important, but I choose to focus on numbers 3, 4, and 5. Together these principles say that there should be a positive communication channel between government and researchers as well as between all research organizations. Most importantly it says that these research and development organizations should avoid an AI arms race. Number 5 references the avoidance of cutting corner on safety standards but fails to recognize any agreed upon set of standards. Hmm, sounds like everybody wants a set of standards to hold each other accountable to, I wonder who would make that? Oh right, the government. These scientists want the government’s help formulating a set of AI research and development standards. So we should do it. Who does it? Maybe it be under the Federal Technology Agency as a Technology Standards Committee. Regardless, the first step for regulators of this industry would be to gain useful insights into the current developments happening around the globe and attempt to measure the rate of advancement. Then and only then can a set of standards be made, and not without the help of all the current researchers. Ideally, whoever is creating these standards has had numerous years of experience in industry designing these systems. Alongside the creation of standards is the creation of enforcement policy. Whether it be the pulling of grant money or, even more extreme, the shutting down of a project or company, this regulatory agency must have the power to resign any project that it deems potentially a great hazard to human life. This would be a tough decision to make by any regard, but having some metric for how positively human-aligned a program is without a doubt would be vital to this survey. Many steps need to be taken to insure public protection from security threats and potential accidents brought about by the uncareful development of AI. With a government agency dedicated to this subject, both policy makers and research scientists can be aware of the paths of AI and their entailed dangers/benefits.
Conclusion:
So, AI is advancing without any signs of stopping, government is bogged down with paperwork and focusing on the wrong things to advance, and no one in government seems to be doing anything about either. The Obama administration at least made a report on the subject, but the few steps he took forward towards positive technology-policy relationships have all but been taken back by the new administration. The government needs to re-imagine the way they do their job, and they need to be comfortable allowing technology to augment their professions. Because with the size of our population, these clerical problems are only going to compound. A new agency needs to be created with the task of providing government with viable and valuable answers to the increasing need for more technology in the workplace. Also, the government needs to do more work to progress the cutting edge of AI technology through grants and regulation. With this sort of agency, billions of taxpayer’s dollars would be saved in man hours, and the potential harms of revolutionary technology like AI can be managed securely. These propositions that I’ve outlined could be realized differently in government. Perhaps instead of an entirely new organization being created, a large subset of an already created agency can be devoted to these practices. But I think it’s fair to say that such an organization, one that both seeks to improve government operations and provide grants and regulations to emerging technologies, would be quite large and in need of a good portion of the US federal budget (% 0.5 maybe). Having those qualities make me want to envision it as a full fledged agency.
Graduated and Unemployed
I finally made it! Four years of struggling: working throughout my degree, numerous extracurriculars from Orientation to founding my Fraternity, every summer taking extra courses to get ahead, fighting doubt and fear to prove to myself that I can do whatever I set my mind to. Never have I been more challenged, shaken to the core, and burnt out than I was every successive quarter at Cal Poly. Week 8 of 10 usually marked the break-down week, where all odds seemed against me. Where passing was going to rely on sheer will power to complete all final projects on time and to the specifications, not to mention passing all final exams as well. As mentioned in my rambly For What it’s Worth post, I could not be more grateful for the opportunities this place has given me. I made many lasting relationships, forged many new unbreakable habits, and truly got what I was looking for: a directive. Go out into the world and make a name for myself in AI and government, help people understand and appreciate the great technological feats that are happening every day. OSTP here I come, but first the tech industry.
Now that my time at university is complete, I must summon my worn, battle-hardened mind from the depths of my person. It must be revived, reborn, and re-motivated. For so long I thought of only, “How am I going to get myself through college?” Now I must think, “How am I going to ensure I make it through life, healthy, happy, loved, and most importantly self-determined?” I lived without any of those feelings for most of my final year at college, because I was alone and stuck in my depression. Complacency is not always your choice, but when it takes all that you are away from you, there comes a time where the only question you ask yourself is why am I still around. That’s where I was. It takes strength to find purpose, knowledge to define it, love to turn it into a passion, and dedication to live by it. Holding yourself accountable only works once you’ve defined your purpose, made it your passion, and are willing to fight anything that challenges you. Only then can you truly convince yourself that your life is yours and you’re happy to live it. Until then, Never Stop Trying.
Final Adventure with Michele
You never know which way your road of life will turn, sometimes it merges with another road, sometimes there’s construction, other times the road forks. The only thing you can do is keep driving and hope you end up where you’re going. Unlike real roads, life has no map of what’s ahead, you’re the map-maker, you get to chose the route. There was a lot of construction on this road, but we always kept pushing forward, until the fork. Thanks for two unforgettable years, Michele.
For What It’s Worth: My College Education
Introduction to This Series:
I have always been interested in the idea of value, asking questions like, “Does anything have an objective value? Are we born with a set of values that are tied to survival? Why do people’s values hardly ever align?” There are two definitions to the word “value” in those questions, one is the literal assessment of worth, and the other is the subjective desires of an individual. Both link to worth, so I often find myself wondering what has worth to me. I plan on writing many pieces on what I think has worth and ultimately defining my values. I still seek out an objective answer to “What has worth?”, but so far I have been unsuccessful in my self-inquisitions.
Education:
Education is something that I think may have the most objective value, I often say, “Knowing is better than not knowing.” I bet many people have examples of when that’s not true. From my perspective as a 21 year old, I’ve spent practically my entire life in school working hard to get an education. If I had to subscribe to a philosophy I would most likely choose pragmatism, following many teachings of the great American Philosopher, John Dewey. Learning is not only necessary in survival, but imperative in self-growth. This post is dedicated to my experiences in university and what they are worth to me. For clarification, I will be mostly speaking on the actual learning material I garnered knowing fully that college isn’t all about books. I will pepper in life lessons learned outside of class to showcase my college experience when not studying.
University:
University is not right for everybody, but it was for me. I already had a strong skill set in computer networking and hardware from my time spent at the technical high school I attended alongside my public school. (Photo for my own personal embarrassment) With this skill set I could have been some Best Buy Geek Squad worker, or further my knowledge and study computers in college. I wanted to help people, and I knew I would be able to help more people if I got a degree. Plus my mom sorta made me. So with little clue of what each major meant and specialized in I chose to study Computer Engineering, a decision I’ll comment more on later. As far as where I wanted to study, the options were slim. I needed somewhere cheap, in California, and top of the nation for computer engineering. The most logical fit was Cal Poly SLO, and somehow they let me in. What I wanted most out of the next four years was to find a purposeful career path. Now that I am near graduation I have a very good idea of what I want to spend my life doing, so I’d say it was a success.
Cal Poly:
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo commonly known as Cal Poly SLO is undoubtedly a unique university. Consistently ranked among the top engineering universities in the country, this campus has everything and more to offer its students. The school has a wide range of diverse opinions and interesting people, with 6 colleges, over 60 majors and more than 300 clubs. I spent my extra time getting deeply involved in the nationally recognized orientation program, founding a social fraternity, and holding an on campus IT job for three years. Something important to note before I go into detail about what I learned here is that Cal Poly is on the quarter system. That means that each class is ten weeks long and there are four periods of instruction (including summer). Some say its not enough time to internalize all the important information, I say learn fast or die trying. I guess it’s no surprise that many die trying, the university has a 40% four year graduation rate (and that’s for all majors). Engineering, let alone computer engineering are much lower. The reason why I am graduating on time is because I spent every summer in summer school and had AP credits transfer, in the end I had 28 units completed outside of Cal Poly. That’s about two quarter’s worth of classes, which freed up my schedule a little each quarter. Not to mention I gamed the system for a while by sitting on a “presidential committee” that gave me priority registration for a year. The biggest complaint among students is the congestion of registration and lack of offered courses. The computer science department has been fighting for more faculty for a while, but teachers get paid terribly and engineers that want to teach are hard to come by. With all that aside, I learned a lot. I can confidently say I know how computers work, from transistors to high level programming. I will do my best to explain my education in the following paragraphs.
Freshman Year:
Fall 2013:
Coming to college with little to no coding experience was daunting because as I soon found out many students had already taken AP Comp Sci in high school (too bad it wasn’t offered for me – if only uniform education was a thing). My first quarter I got introduced to code with CPE 123 – Intro to Computing: Computational Art. The class taught a sort of baby Java called Processing where we designed basic figures with simple geometric shapes, like penguins and fish. For my final project I got carried by a coding wiz named Christopher who taught me my first important lesson. Just because you aren’t as good a coder, doesn’t mean you can’t help. We built a fun interactive game that opened a chest and shot out fireworks on a mouse click.
Winter 2014:
My first real coding class came in the form of CPE 101 – Fundamentals of Computer Science 1. It was C. This class taught the basics, conditionals, loops, functions. I don;t remember any specific projects, but I remembering thinking, “Code is magic, but I hate having to type semicolon at the end of every line”. This class got changed when I was a Junior to python, probably would have thought the same thing, but instead said, “I hate having to indent everything perfectly”. Either way, it was a proper introduction to a classic language and many classes down the line were in C so I appreciated the intro. The other CPE class I took was CPE 141 – Discrete Structures, this was all about ways to store data. It went well with the first intro class because it showcases things like arrays, and how data moved around the computer.
Spring 2014:
Like many classes in my major, they were apart of a series of courses. What came after CPE 101 was CPE 102 – Fundamentals 2. However, this was in Java, for whatever reason. This course taught more advanced data structures like linked lists and basic algorithms like search. Up until this point all I knew was imperative and functional programming. With this class I was introduced to object oriented. I don’t know if I skipped a class or something, but to this day OO is weird to me even if it is most logical and explicit. This quarter also marked the beginning of the electrical engineering courses. EE 112 – Electric Circuit Analysis 1 was all about Ohms Law basically. It taught what current was, how voltage controlled it and how resistance managed it. This is where the CPE’s started wishing they were CSC’s. I was different, I enjoyed the math and was curious about electricity so I had fun.
Sophomore Year:
Fall 2014:
For CPE’s sophomore year and junior year are by far the toughest. There are many pivotal classes that make or break your career. If you fail anything, you will be held another year. It was also difficult because each student was required to take many other difficult courses outside the major like physics and linear algebra. My first quarter I was in CPE 103 – Fundamentals 3, CPE 133 – Digital Design, and EE 211 – Electric Circuit Analysis 2. 103 was also in Java and went over more complex algorithms and data structures like hash maps and sorting. 133 was the first real computer engineering class where we learned assembly code and what was going on under the hood with C. I really enjoyed this as I got to see what the machine sees, how the CPU runs instructions. We also worked with FPGA’s like the Nexys 2 board and learned the basis to VHDL. EE 211 was tough, it was all about op amps, RLC circuits, and phasors. Capacitors and inductors were now about of my circuit toolkit. This was about the time were things got really confusing. Like when you do a lot of multiplication and division, addition and subtraction start to seem weird. I found it difficult to visualize how the electrons were reacting to these new elements, so it was then difficult to understand the basics as well. Plus, mesh analysis and superposition are freaky.
Winter 2015:
I took it easy this quarter, I was worried about my GPA and wanted to keep above a 3.0. I took only one major course: CPE 233, the follow up to 133. This class was a bit more fun than the last, because we got to chose our project. We got to build a CPU with assembly and VHDL. It was complete with adders, registers, and stack. The final project my group member and I got to experiment with VGA and designed a tomogachi knock-off with a feed and kill switch. It was actually amazing.
Spring 2015:
Another more relax quarter, because at this time I was sitting on the exec board of my fraternity and a team member for orientation. I took the last circuit analysis class EE 212. Finally the whole picture was revealed to us, AC power did exist and it was super cool. Transformers were added to our toolkit and a new domain was understood, frequency response. It was interesting and enlightening to grasp the relation between magnetism and electricity more fully. Both are incredible forces in our universe, that are very much related. I also took a modern physics class, and learned E=mc^2! Quantum physics isn’t that bad! What is hard is grasping that energy is a wave and a particle always, kinda?
Junior Year:
Fall 2015:
This was my hardest quarter at Cal Poly. The hardest EE class and hardest CSC class both in the same quarter, what was I thinking? CPE 357 – Systems Programming, this class is notorious for failure, and it was a prerequisite for practically all upper division courses. It had been awhile since I programmed in C, so when this class came around I was blindsided. 3-5 labs a week, 3 huge projects, 6 midterms and a final. This class challenged me beyond any other to date. But after, I knew I could program, there was no doubt in my mind. This also introduced me to a terrible pain I later coined as code migraines. No special project, just constant code. EE 306 – Semiconductors was all about NMOS/PMOS dioeds, transistors, and BJTs. So much crammed into one class, not to mention the hardest EE professor who made my cry in office hours. I appreciated learning how doping works, but really didn’t appreciate learning about technology that was obsolete. Finally I had EE 228 – Continuous Time Signals and Systems, which was all about the frequency and time domains, and a bit about foureir transforms. What I learned most from this class is how a function is just a black box with an input an an output.
Winter 2016:
My last EE course, thank god. EE 307 was amazing, in it I learned about building all sorts of gates/adders/multipliers with transistors. This really wrapped up electrical engineering for me because I could truly understand how current made decisions in a transistor network. Realizing the massive scale of these networks in our everyday devices was eye opening. Moore’s Law was shown to me and I was skeptical and bewildered. I was also really glad to not have to draw any more circuits, because straight lines aren’t my thing. I also took CPE 315 – Computer Architecture this quarter which taught me about some important features to computers. With this class I found out I loved computer history and started reading about John von Neumann. It;s incredible to think that 99% of computers out in the world follow the same style of architecture. I also took technical writing and stats, which I loved and wanted to do more of after school.
Spring 2016:
My first really fun quarter! I took CPE 329 – Microprocessor Based Design, where we wrote C to control a small board. This class was great because of the free form final project. My partner and I chose to build a heartbeat sensor utilizing a photosensitive diode and bright LED. CPE 453 – Operating Systems was the second of the “big three” 357 being the first. This class went over every major OS related subject, from scheduling to file systems. The final project had us create a mini file system similar to Unix, the code ended up close to 2,500 lines all in C. I respect the early programmers so much after this class. It helped me realize just how much code is out there in the world, and somebody had to write it. Finally, the most pivotal class in my college career: CPE 480 – AI. I learned so much in and out of the classroom for this course, read numerous books/research papers and watched many presentations. This marks the period in my life where I finally decided what I wanted to get in to. The project I worked on was a machine learning model to predict stock valuations using twitter sentiment data. This was only to be the beginning. I also took a social ethics course with peaked my interest because AI has many social implications that I hope to solve in my lifetime.
Senior Year:
Fall 2016:
Senior year, the final stretch, with an end in sight I wanted to utilize my time looking into what I would do after university. I took CPE 349 – Algorithms, which was a bit of review for me, but allowed me to practice my python skills, which until them were terrible. Looking back on the programs I wrote I see how crappy they were, but you have to start somewhere. CPE 365 – Databases was the second technical elective out of three that I chose. It was all SQL all day, just like 357 this course had an excessive amount of work. But at least now I can say I know SQL like the back of my hand. For the final project I built football statistics app utilizing JDBC. This quarter also marked the beginning of Capstone, a 2 quarter long project based course. I was apart of the group that was tasked with redesigning an outdated home inspection app. I was the program manager and led the team through the process of prototyping and initial coding for the iPad app.
Winter 2017:
The second quarter of Capstone was in full swing and many of my weekends were spent in the computer lab programming in XCode. I learned that planning is the most important part of any coding project. I learned that by not finishing the project in the amount of time we expected. I guess I also learned to manage my expectations. Lastly, I learned that college is full of busy students and not everybody is somebody you can rely on. The last of the “big three” was also this quarter, CPE 464 – Networks. I loved this class because it was all about the internet! TCP/IP protocol stack was the name of the game. I build my own messaging app and even my own ftp server, from scratch. This was the class where I wrote the most lines by myself for one program, around 1800. I also started my senior project, which is another two quarter long class. I decided on building a machine learning and computer vision slither.io bot.
Spring 2017:
My last technical elective was spent on CPE 466 – Data Mining. So far We have surveyed basic rules mining from web data and supervised/unsupervised learning. Pretty much all major coding is in python (some SQL), and I am finally getting good at using python. I’m also finishing up my senior project.
Conclusions:
Cal Poly has given me so much knowledge, most of which I could never have even thought of learning. I’m very proud of my education, and am hopeful to learn even more in my future. My university career has given me passion and guidance to follow my dreams of programming AI applications. If I learned anything it’s this: “Life is full of things to learn, never be complacent, always improve and always strive to be better. If you try everyday to grow your skill set and understanding of the world, you will die happy.” It may seem morbid, but to me it’s just realistic and simple.
Hello world!
Here’s my blog.
I will post commentary on subjects that interest me and effect my life in some pertinent way. (Hint: Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Education, Government, and Science)
What follows will mostly be objective, but I’ll throw in facts and study’s as often as I catch them.
Rating: PG-13