We had a crop of pumpkins surprise us in the yard this summer. Most of them, somewhat inconveniently, grew under the Whitespire Birch tree we planted last year. This made finding the pumpkins an interesting game, and we had to improvise a trellis to keep the vines off the grass so the pumpkins wouldn’t rot.
Matt Taibbi has an article in the latest issue of Rolling Stone called Forgiving Student Debt Alone Won’t Fix the Crisis. It’s a good argument that doesn’t get enough attention. Every semester that clicks by is another semester where thousands of students are issued loans to cover tuition, books, materials, and living expenses at colleges both expensive and affordable.
I agree with Taibbi and so many others that total or partial student loan forgiveness is a good idea. Where Taibbi’s article doesn’t go, and to his point politicians don’t either, is into what could be done to provide long term solutions. Here’s a short list of things that I, a lay-person who has learned a lot about this stuff, can think of that might help:
Again, these are just twelve ideas I could come up with by thinking about this for like half an hour. I’m sure they’re expensive but I’m also certain these would work toward changing the federal loan program away from being a predatory regime rigged against the borrower.
Edit: I missed 11 and 12 in the original post.
I’ve written about white privilege on this blog in the past, and I don’t plan on stopping. The first time I was introduced to the concept was in college, in a speech given by Tim Wise. (The address he gave us was a lot like this one.) Tim talked about privilege as a pathology, a mental dysfunction that causes white folks to be afraid of others and worry about what’s coming for our status. Whether we like it or not, this pathology comes for all of us, sucking us into situations where we put the security of our privilege in front of the well being of our friends, neighbors, family, and, mostly, people we don’t know.
(more…)And it wasn’t the first time.
I turned 33 on May 26 of this year. Shortly after I finished a 36 mile bike ride, news broke that a black man was killed by police in Minneapolis. His name was George Floyd. Update: A previous version of this post said he was killed on May 26. He died on the 25th but video of the killing was released on the 26th.
(more…)My latest crossword is called “On the Web.” The theme is four clues around internet terminology and it’s just in time for all the folks out there who need a good excuse to get some time away from family chaos this Thanksgiving. This is my third crossword made for public consumption, the second, “Rocky Mountain Way,” published back in April featured themed clues about 14,000 foot mountains in Colorado.
A few improvements on this puzzle compared to past puzzles:
Like Rocky, the puzzle was ultimately made using the open source software, Phil, by Keiran King. I went back to drawing out the initial draft by hand on paper for this one. Having more practice with grid design, theme development, and going back to drawing this out by hand helped improve the quality significantly.
Another thing that helped this time around was sending the puzzle to a few testers before publishing it. Thanks to everybody who played along and put up with the early release version. For everybody else, happy solving and thanks for giving my puzzle a try! If you have feedback, leave a comment or reach out some other way.
Before I became a dad, a few of people told me something along the lines of “being a dad changes your brain chemistry.” The new person in the world, the unique responsibility you have for that human, and the pure joy they bring to your life rewires your brain. There’s some science to the idea that parenting builds new pathways in your brain, that fathers and mothers both new and unique hormones during pregnancy and once the baby arrives. Not exactly rewiring but upgraded wiring?
(more…)This is my second crossword, a 15×15 themed puzzle with 68 words. It is themed and though it’s still only an OK puzzle it’s much better than my last in some important ways.
(more…)We had a great time on a recent trip to Santa Fe, NM. One that provoked a lot of thought and took us to some amazing sites. Read more on the main family blog.
A couple years ago, I fell in love with Amazon Subscribe & Save. I thought it would be handy to have more toilet paper, shampoo, cat litter, and other things we use on the regular shipped straight to us when we ran out. It worked better for some things — like cat food and litter, which we run through more predictably — than others. We ended up with like a year’s supply of paper towels. It was included in Amazon Prime and we even got a small discount for scheduling more things together.
Dash buttons took us to a whole next level. How convenient, I thought, to be able to just order more of the exact thing I needed at the press of a button. So I got one for paper towels, trash bags, and laundry detergent and promptly cancelled all of our Subscribe and Save.
The thing with Amazon is, they have all kinds of convenient things like this. Amazon Prime itself is super convenient but do we really need it? No. As I’ve started to learn the social cost of these conveniences, I’ve begun thinking twice about whether the convenience is worth the cost.
We cancelled our Prime membership a couple months ago.
While Amazon has added thousands of jobs to the city of Seattle, it has also made it a dramatically expensive and inequitable city to live in. The company’s rapid growth has caused a housing shortage to become a housing drought, with the city unable to keep up with demand, despite building new apartments fast than any other city in the country. This wouldn’t be terrible in and of itself but the company doesn’t seem to be doing anything to neutralize the inequities it’s created in the city. Shrugging it off instead as the price of having a company of its size in the community.
Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest person. One might think that means working for his company must be lucrative, right? Maybe it is if you’re one of their software developers, but if you’re one of their delivery drivers, not so much. Amazon Flex pays well for an hourly job, but like many gig economy jobs, employees don’t get the guarantees and protections that full-time employment would carry, and even fewer still than a union-represented job.
Warehouse workers, too, don’t see much share of the fortune being made off of our Prime membership. In fact, several stories in the last couple years have illustrated the social cost of rapid delivery and the conditions endured by the invisible workforce behind Amazon’s product. While $120 per year may be the appropriate price consumers are willing to pay for this product, if that price can’t support the infrastructure keeping it running, it’s not worth supporting.
Amazon is everywhere. They’re increasingly diversifying their product line to the point where you can get an Amazon brand anything. I have to admit they’re doing a pretty good job of it.
I own several AmazonBasics products because they’re cheaper and about as good as other brands. Walmart, Target, and other big box stores all have their off brands, and AmazonBasics isn’t much different, except that they make basically everything. Amazon Prime Video, too, is turning out some excellent original programs that deserve to be made. I’m glad Amazon is giving them a chance. Finally, Amazon Web Services is inescapable and invisible from most choices you make on the web. One thing these three Amazon products have in common is that they’re really good at what they do. Together with acquisitions like Whole Foods make Amazon increasingly difficult to escape. (A seemingly-local coffee roaster here in Denver is actually owned by Whole Foods and, now, indirectly Amazon.) They’re yet another agglomerate company endemic to modern life.
Just as we can’t stop our bank from selling our mortgage to a giant commercial bank, we can choose to put our microeconomic choices into local businesses. Just as we can bank with a local credit union or community bank, we can choose not to give Amazon $120 every year just for access to their elite delivery service.
We can still get free delivery, it just takes longer without Prime — as long or longer even than the free delivery options from competitors like Target, if our recent experience is any indication. The forcing function of this is that we now seek out things we need quickly from local sources. This sometimes includes big box stores like Target, but also includes the shops in our neighborhood as well. Target may be a big box, but they pay a fair wage to our neighbors and full time employees there have the guarantees and protections that one should expect from a good job.
Some specialized items may only be purchasable from Amazon, but it’s increasingly worth the effort to be more conscious about the social costs of our spending.