Books read in November 2021

1. Markswoman by Rati Mehrota

2. North Korea Journal by Michael Palin

Hard work

Conventional wisdom is that hard work is a virtue.  If you work hard, you will achieve success.

I think we need to question the notion that work needs to be hard to be adequate.

Some people, when they read that, will have the visceral reaction of "Oh, you just don't want to work!"

But that's not the argument I'm making here today.

For the purposes of today's blog post, I'm not questioning the "work" part, I'm just questioning the "hard" part.

(I know there are other people questioning the "work" part and I'm not going to get in their way, that's just not my topic here today.)

When I think of everything I've ever done well, I've never worked hard at any of it. I simply...did it. I carried out the necessary actions, did the thing, and it was done and done well.

So, you might be thinking, what would happen if I did work hard at it?

And the answer is that it would be impossible to work hard at it, because I finished it before the work got hard.

Analogy: you can't sprint one step. You simply take the step, and you've completed it before you can even get up to a sprinting level of effort. (Unless, of course, you can't take any steps.  But then you can't sprint one step either.)

There are also quite a few things in life that I've worked hard at.  And, despite my hard work, I never reached the point of doing them well. I basically knocked myself out to achieve mediocrity.

Before we even look at it from our own perspective as workers, if we look at it just from the perspective of having a functional economy and society, people knocking themselves out to achieve mediocrity is the last thing we want!

If you're in the market for a product or service, you want that product to be made or that service to be provided by someone who knows what they're doing.  The more important it is and the harder it is to do, the more you want someone who's certain they can do it well.  

 

You want a beautician who makes people way uglier than you look way hotter than you've ever aspired to, no one who isn't sure if they can make eyebrows like yours look good but they'll try their best. You want a renovator who thinks the work you have in mind is so easy they don't see why you don't do it yourself, not one who's unsure whether it's possible but is willing to give it the good old college try. You want a surgeon who could do your surgery in their sleep, not one who for whom it's a reach goal.

 

Essentially, if someone is working hard, it's a sign that something is wrong - insufficient training, too-tight timelines, not the right person for the job, etc.

 

Maybe, instead of valuing hard work, we as a society should be working on eliminating it.

Homebuying incentives need to come before the home is bought

From time to time, you hear politicians talking about improving housing affordability by providing tax incentives or tax credits or rebates to first-time homebuyers.

From my point of view as a first-time homebuyer who received a number of different tax incentives/credits/rebates, I can tell you with confidence that this will do nothing to improve affordability.

First, let's look at what goes into affordability. To buy a home, you have to not just actually be able to afford it, but also be considered on-paper to be able to afford it. 

To be considered on-paper to be able to afford a home, you need a combination of down-payment and mortgage that will add up to the price of the home, and you need to have this at the moment you seek approval for a mortgage, which comes before the purchase. 

Your mortgage eligibility is calculated based on your current salary and debt load. The amount of downpayment you have is determined either by having to show proof of your bank balance or having to literally write a cheque, depending on whether you're buying pre-owned or pre-construction.

And, at no point in the process, do they look at any tax incentives or other incentives that might be forthcoming in the next year.

I bought pre-construction in 2012, and the sale closed in 2017. I had about $5000 coming to me in rebates from my realtor and my developer (which I received when the sale closed), and further $5000 in tax credits/rebates/incentives (I forget exactly how they were classifed), which I received in spring 2018 after doing my 2017 taxes.

But affordability was calculated at the moment I committed to the purchase in 2012. I had to get a mortgage commitment letter from a bank, which looked at how much money I had immediately on hand to use as a downpayment, and then plugged my income (and, possibly, my debt - I didn't have debt at the time so I'm not certain) into a mortage calculator to determine how much I could afford on paper.

They didn't look at and didn't care about these rebates that were coming to me. If the bank's total of what they thought I could afford had been $10,000 short of the condo's sale price, they wouldn't have cared if I pointed to the rebates that were coming to me. They had no mechanism to plug the rebates into the spreadsheet they used to determine affordability, which, ultimately, meant that these rebates did nothing to make a home more affordable to me. If that $10,000 had been make-or-break, it would have come too late in the process to make the difference between not being able to buy a home and being able to buy a home.

If governments want to provide incentives to make homes more affordable to first-time buyers, any measures they implement need to come into effect before the point at which affordability is calculated. That might mean delivering the incentive payments earlier. That might mean making mortgage lenders change how they calculate affordability. That might mean fixing the economy so that ordinary people with ordinary jobs can afford ordinary homes with no drama. 

But, in any case, a tax rebate over a year after the sale has closed isn't going to improve actual in-real-life affordability. Incentives to improve affordability need to be in the buyer's hands a the moment affordability is calculated.

Flaws in my education: I never learned that I'm bad at spotting racism

One thing I've learned in recent years is that I'm bad at spotting racism.

 

There are innumerable racist (and antisemitic, and transphobic, and ableist, etc. etc.) tropes and dog-whistles that I've never seen before in my life, or that look benign to me, or that look like nonsense to me.

 

They're obvious to other racists, they're obvious to the targets of the racism, and to me they're completely devoid of connotations, or of any meaning whatsoever.

 

 

It would certainly have been useful if my antiracism education had mentioned this! 

 

Until just a few short years ago, I had no clue that I was bad at spotting racism. I'd see racist things and think "That doesn't look racist to me," and think that this opinion of mine was some how helpful or relevant rather than being ignorant and ill-informed!

It is a bit complicated if you think about it from an educator's perspective. In an ideal world, people would be able to recognize racism rather than merely recognizing that they're bad at recognizing it. (Well, in an ideal ideal world there wouldn't be racism lurking around needing to be recognized...) Obviously, "I don't know, I'm really bad at this sort of thing" is not the desired endpoint of any educational program.

But, at the same time, if you are going to emerge from the educational program really bad at that sort of thing, it's far better to recognize that you're bad at it than to think you're competent!

The irony is they came so very close to informing me that there were forms of racism that I didn't recognize. 

 

One of the examples of prejudice and stereotypes given in our anti-racism unit was the stereotype that Polish people are stupid.

My mother was born in Poland. Half my family is Polish. I identify as Polish myself, and Poland would claim me if I made them aware of my existence.

And I had never before in my life been exposed to the notion that Polish people are stupid. In fact, if you'd asked me to name stereotypes about Polish people, I would never have guessed that people think we're stupid - the Polish branch of my family is by far classier, more intelligent and better educated!

 

So this could have led me to realize that there are stereotypes floating around out there that I can't possibly fathom.

 

Unfortunately, it led me in the opposite direction: it reinforced my internalized notion that racism is a thing of the past, and that any stereotypes that may have existed in the past are no longer doing harm to the people affected. After all, if I, as a member of the targeted group, had never in my life heard of the stereotype used as a go-to example of stereotypes, surely  nothing about this can be affecting actual real-life present-day people!

I don't know what the actual solution is. I don't know whether it would be advisable to actually go around teaching teenagers stereotypes that they've never heard of before. And I don't think that "I'm really bad at this sort of thing and not able to make an informed comment" is an acceptable outcome of an educational curriculum.

And also, if, for whatever reason, students emerge from the curriculum really bad at that sort of thing and unable to make an informed comment, it is imperative that they are able to recognize this! I would be a much better person if I'd been able to recognize this 25 years ago.

Things the Library Should Invent: lend out external media readers

While rummaging through my box of 20 years of accumulated spare cables, I found some random unmarked floppy disks. I have no idea what's on them, and no longer have any computers with a floppy drive.

 

I pondered what might be on the disks, and tried to brainstorm ways I might get at a floppy drive. I wondered whether you can rent an external floppy drive. There doesn't appear to be any such thing. They're fairly cheap to buy, but I'd only need it for a few minutes to read and possibly copy the contents of the disks, and then I'd be done with it forever.

 

Then I wondered if the library computers still have floppy drives. Doubtful. Apart from the fact that floppy disks haven't been in common use for quite a while, I doubt the library wants to make it easy for people to run random programs on their computers.

Then I realized, this is a problem that the library could solve by making external media readers available to borrow - floppy drives, CD drives, maybe even cassette players and record players that can be plugged into computers to convert music to MP3s, if such a thing exists.

Surely I'm not the only one with some obsolete media that I'm no longer equipped to read or back up. Surely I'm not the only one who just needs a floppy drive briefly, with no need to own one.

An external USB floppy drive costs less than the retail price of a hardcover book, so it seems like the library should be able to afford a few to lend out. And if the library lends me a USB drive that I plug into my own computer, my computer bears the risk of whatever the contents of my mystery disks might be - the library's disk drive is just a conduit.

 

Q: But if you let people borrow electronic equipment, they might wreck it! 

A: Yes, just like if you let people borrow books, they might wreck them! I suspect libraries are accustomed to budgeting for eventual wear and tear on their items.

 

Part of the library's mission statement is to provide universal access to a broad range of information. Perhaps that could include the information that we have stored on outdated media?

Another option for Captain Awkward #1352

Captain Awkward #1352:

Dear Captain Awkward,

I (they/them) am single, live alone, and have been working from home throughout the COVID situation – the long-term isolation has been really hard. During the last year I took up fishkeeping, which has been really great for my mental health.

But then I developed something known in the hobby as “MTS” – multiple tank syndrome – in which I, well, started to go a little overboard with new fish tanks and fishes. In addition to the assortment of tanks in my actual apartment (basically one in every room, each with different types of fish), I set up a “balcony tub” with floating plants and rosy red minnows.

Last week new neighbors moved into my building and I guess they must have seen my balcony tub because they asked if I had fish on my balcony and…I truly am not sure why…but I impulsively lied, like, “No! Of course I don’t have fish on the balcony! Ha ha ha…”

But the thing is: I do have fish on the balcony.

The fish are very healthy and happy and I don’t think it’s against the rules (I did check the lease) – although that might be because no one ever thought to make a rule against it…

Anyway, I have no idea why I lied other than like…maybe the built-up isolation of the last year and a half, and some internal sense that keeping fish on your balcony was Too Much, and therefore in order to not seem Super Weird to my new neighbors I should keep that under wraps? (Don’t ask, don’t shell!)

But now I feel even *more* awkward and way weirder than if I’d just been like “oh yeah those are my minnows!”

I lied about having fish on the balcony, and I clearly do have fish on the balcony.

In the past I’ve had good relationships with my neighbors. Is there any way I can salvage this truly awkward introduction??

Thank you in advance for your advice. I don’t think this question has been addressed before.

All best,
A Fishy Neighbor

 

As Captain Awkward points out in her answer, there's a strong likelihood that the neighbour has already forgotten or written off the interaction.

Also as Captain Awkward says:

Fortunately,  “I was trying so hard not to come off as weird that I overcorrected and did something objectively weird”  is an extremely relatable and common predicament, and being able to laugh at yourself (“I didn’t want you to think I was obsessed with fish, good job, me, now you think I’m a liar who is obsessed with fish! Welcome to the building!)  is the best remedy I know.

In this vein of a relatable and common predicament and being able to laugh at oneself, another option, if someone should directly inquire about the fact that you specifically said you don't have fish even though you clearly have fish, is something along the lines of "Sorry, it was an attempt at a joke that clearly didn't work. My alleged sense of humour misfires more often than I'd care to admit!"

(Q: What is the attempted joke? A: The very notion that your fishy self would not have fish on the balcony is laughable!)

Benefits to this approach:

• You aren't admitting to lying, or mentioning that you lied as if it's no big deal. Some people are extremely prescriptivist about lying and think that if someone lies at all ever, they're intrinsically untrustworthy. There are also people who are wary enough of lying that they'd see "I told a lie because I panicked" as a red flag suggesting that you're untrustworthy. 
• Having a joke misfire is also a relatable and common predicament
• When assholes make a joke that misfires, they tend to double down and/or blame the audience for not getting/liking the joke. In contrast, admitting that your joke misfired - and that your sense of humour doesn't do the job as often as you'd like in general - is a sign of humility and strength of character. Wouldn't you think positively of someone who genially admits that their joke didn't land and moves on?