The Mistborn Trilogy Got Me

Yes, I know I’m late. I finally got around to reading Brandon Sanderson’s popular Mistborn trilogy.

I’ve had the books for a while, but you all know how books can sit for a long time unread.

The impetus was that I was going to visit Sanderson’s hometown, Lincoln, Nebraska. That got me to pack Mistborn for my recent trip.

I’d actually started reading it some time last year and lost interest. But I tried it again, when I was stuck with few other books to read (specifically, at Enchanted Rock, when I was alone at the campground because they only accept tents and my relatives were staying in an RV). It took me a while to get into it, but when it hooked me, it really hooked me.

Lack of Air Cleaning Ruined Train Travel

The train goes on a curved track through a snowy forest in Colorado

Before the pandemic, I loved train rides, including Amtrak’s long-distance routes. One of my favorite parts was meeting people from various walks of life on Amtrak, especially in the observation lounge.

I got a troublesome respiratory infection in the summer of 2018. I can’t prove it came from Amtrak, but it’s by far the most likely source, since that’s where I was in close quarters with many people for hours prior to my symptoms.

Amtrak claims to have great ventilation and filtration. But I’ve never seen the specs for their air cleaning system. And evidence from some Amtrak passengers suggests that the ventilation ain’t that great.

Vernal Pools

A few weeks ago, I visited Enchanted Rock in Texas. The most delightful surprise were the vernal pools at the top.

I’d read about vernal pools years ago in some book by John Muir. I only knew they were a phenomenon in the Sierra mountains, though it makes sense they’d exist in other mountain ranges. I didn’t expect to see them on a rock in Texas hill country that isn’t even a proper mountain.

A Visit with Vaxxed-and-Relaxed Family

I’ve been away for a couple weeks, to see the solar eclipse. Or rather, to see family who had come out to see the solar eclipse. To a campground. Which means outdoors.

Aside from my recent driving lesson, this was the first time I’d left San Francisco city limits in over two and a half years, and the first time I’d left the state of California since 2019.

It’s not often I get a chance to see relatives in a mostly outdoor environment, and this might be the last time I see certain relatives alive.

Of this group, I’m the only one who currently takes any precautions against covid other than vaccination.

An Asexual Reads About Her Grandfather’s Sex Life

People of any sexual orientation may find it awkward to read their grandfathers’ descriptions of their sex lives. Being asexual adds an extra layer of awkward.

As you may know from this blog post, I’ve read some of what my grandfather wrote about his sexual experiences.

Maybe it helps that I never knew my paternal grandfather personally. I have exactly one memory of him. He was lying in a bed because he was too sick to get up. He was too sick to talk to me, and he was so hard of hearing that if I said anything, he wouldn’t understand me. But I saw him and he saw me. I’m grateful that I have any kind of memory of meeting him, but it didn’t make for a deep relationship.

When I’m reading his autobiography—which he never completed but my uncle edited the drafts which exist into something like a book—it’s like reading about a mythical figure I’ve known about since childhood, not someone from my life.

The most awkward parts are—you guessed it—the parts about sex with my grandmother. I have many more personal memories of her. My father—who also read this autobiography—said it was weird to read about how he was conceived. Because he said that before I read that section, I was prepared, and I found it interesting rather than awkward.

He never gets into pornographic detail. It’s all ‘fade-to-black.’ What he talks about at length is how he got the sex to happen.

For much of my life, I’ve subconsciously thought that most people are actually asexual, or at least ace-spectrum. Now I can say with great certainty that my grandfather was not asexual. His writing has helped me ‘get’ a little more how sexual attraction works.

Ever since he was a teenager, one of his top priorities in life had been having sex with attractive women. He cared far more about this than material wealth.

As a woman, it’s almost impossible to be unaware of the heterosexual male gaze on us, but it’s something else to read about it from the inside. Except, I’ve read about it ‘from the inside’ plenty of times before, but this hits different. Is it because I biologically came from this guy, or that he indirectly (through my father) shaped the environment I grew up in?

Sometimes he straight-up sexually objectifies women, but sometimes he resists. He understands women exist for themselves, and he even explains how he came to understand that as a young man (and he feels that his earliest sexual partners deserve an apology). But then he’ll describe some women and the possibility of having sex with them is all he’s interested in.

I appreciate his frankness.

Various people I’ve known found it odd just how frank my parents are about talking about sex (once I was an adolescent, they didn’t talk about sex around me when I was little kid). I wonder if my grandfather raised my father to be frank about sex like that, or more likely, my grandparents were compatible partially because they felt comfortable talking about sex honestly with each other, and they both raised my father to be like that. He certainly talks about sex (and birth control and risk of sexually transmitted disease) more openly than the stereotypical white American man from the early 20th century.

If he didn’t ask my grandmother to read it, he must’ve been aware she could if she wanted. That he was fine with her reading about him having sex with other women (mostly before their marriage, but sometimes after) is… interesting.

Beyond my grandmother, I’m not sure who the intended audience was. I don’t know whether he intended to publish or just share among family and friends. He wrote much of this, if not all of it, before I was born, so I wasn’t the intended audience… unless he wrote it for hypothetical grandchildren. Pretty sure he never considered how this would read to an asexual granddaughter.

If I wrote an autobiography, I don’t know what activity would pop out to readers. Definitely would not be my sex life, unless its non-existence were conspicuous.

The Herd Immunity Free Rider Dilemma

My early childhood could be summed up as ‘little kid lost among grownups.’ I had almost no contact with small children until I entered kindergarten at a public elementary school where most of the other students had already had chickenpox infections. One time, at the school bus stop, kids were comparing their chickenpox experiences, and I had nothing to share.

Obviously, this was before the chickenpox vaccine became available in the United States and it became mandatory to attend elementary school. My middle school and high school didn’t require chickenpox vaccination since they assumed we’d already been infected.

I recently found out that I have no antibodies against varicella-zoster virus (VZV), the virus that causes chickenpox. My measles, mumps, and rubella antibody levels were solid, so it’s not an immune system problem. That means I’m the rare adult who isn’t infected with VZV.

Tributaries of the Nile Aren’t Just in Africa

Before reading this post, read this account of a Canadian surgeon who went on a mission to Gaza. It’s more important. If you only have time/energy to read one thing, read that.

Though this blog has been around for over a decade, I’m not sure if I’ve ever said that my mother is from Israel. Which makes me an Israeli American.

I almost never introduce myself that way. I say I’m an American Jew. Most people who hear ‘American Jew’ think my Jewish ancestors probably immigrated to the United States in the early twentieth century, 1950s at the latest.

Zionists love American Jews. They hate Israeli Americans, except the Israeli Americans who put a lot of time and money into supporting (Zionist) Israel. That’s because the existence of Israeli Americans (and other Israeli emigrants) flies in the face of a key idea of Zionism: that Israel is the ideal home for Jews which no Jew would want to leave.

First, my mother didn’t use her womb to increase the Jewish population in Israel. Then she removed herself, thereby decreasing the Jewish population. Some Zionists have incredibly harsh things to say about people like my mother.

Could I Have Met This Woman?

Some years back, I overheard my father and uncle talk about a ‘mistress’ my grandfather had when in was in China during World War II. I’m not sure how much they knew about her then.

Since then, some of my grandfather’s old writings have surfaced, and I finally, finally got to reading the part about where he was in China. The answer is no, he didn’t have a mistress. Not exactly. He had sex a few times with sex workers, but those weren’t long-term relationships.

The woman who my father and uncle had referred to was probably a Chinese teenager he helped with math homework and had a friendship with. We have a photograph of them standing together.

I Returned to My Past, and It’s Still Here

Recently, I drove a car for the first time since… before I started this blog. In 2012. This was also the first time I left city limits since June 2021.

The last time I’d driven a car had been after a period of not driving for months and it hadn’t gone well. Thus, I was nervous about driving again after over a decade of zero experience.

Turns out I drove really well. Not just my opinion, my driving instructor also thought I did really well, much better than his average student (note: his average student is someone without a driver’s license, so not a high bar).

Without thinking about it, all kinds of old habits came back. I assumed the wheels had been turned into the curb until the instructor told me otherwise and found it weird that the parking brake wasn’t engaged. I did all of the mirror checks and turned my head to look around at the right moments. Most astonishingly, I stayed calm through this.

Most People Who Say “Follow the Science” Mean “Follow Authority”

In 2020 and 2021, many people claimed they ‘followed the science’ and urged others to do the same. Now, many of those same people ignore new scientific research.

When they make claims such as “covid isn’t a problem in summer”, I ask for sources and offer my own evidence (such as covid wastewater levels in summer), and instead of sharing sources they drop the argument and shift to something else like “covid is here to stay” (what? but I thought you just said covid wasn’t a problem in summer?)

Science is messy.

The history of science is full of ideas which people once widely accepted which were later proven false. Everyone believes something right now which future scientists will prove is untrue, including me. So, any serious attempt to follow the science must include humility and accepting that you are wrong about something, you don’t know what that is (yet).

Read more: Most People Who Say “Follow the Science” Mean “Follow Authority”

As the scientific progress happens, many claims are backed by unclear, confusing, and contradictory evidence, and it’s often not obvious what is true.

This isn’t an excuse for throwing one’s hands up in the air, declaring that nothing is knowable, and thus it’s not worth trying. Some claims have much stronger evidence than other claims. I am pretty darn sure that in my current position gravity pulls me much more strongly to the center of the earth than towards the sun. Anyone claiming otherwise would need to explain why I’m not floating towards the sun (or how I am in fact floating towards the sun yet unaware of that).

Following the science means thinking about the evidence and making an effort to make sense of it, while being aware the it’s easy to make mistakes.

That’s not what people who say things like ‘follow the science’ mean. They aren’t talking about the real scientific method, they’re talking about following an authority affiliated (rightly or wrongly) with institutional science.

It’s impossible to coordinate the actions of a large number of people without some kind of authority. Authority can take many forms, good and bad. For example, in many societies, orators (people who were really good at shaping words to make arguments) had authority. Anarchists, who often reject formal hierarchical authority, often follow the lead of particular writers and thinkers, who thus have a form of authority.

When someone says “follow the authorities” in most contexts I think they mean the official governments which rule the area. In a pandemic, “follow the authorities” isn’t necessarily bad advice. It depends on whether the authorities are making good orders or not.

It’s also not practically possible for most people to follow ‘the science.’ Arguably, it’s not possible for anybody. Even professional scientists can only follow certain slices of the science. When dealing with a pandemic, getting people to follow a flawed authority that has enough grounding in what’s really going on to be useful is better than getting people to follow the science.

So why do people say “follow the science” instead of what they really mean, “follow the authorities”? Many people don’t understand how science really works. They learned about science in school from textbooks and teachers who wielded authority over them. Thus, they conflate “science” with the authorities who forced them to learn about it.

Science is also a potential source of authority, just as being a great orator is a potential source of authority.

Aside from all that, in the United States, we like to present ourselves as not following authority, even when that’s exactly what we’re doing. Even when Americans desperately want to follow authority to delegate responsibility for their choices, we don’t want to admit it.

Personally, I prefer authority to be transparent and clearly defined. It makes it easier to hold authorities responsible. Thus, if someone is advocating following authority, I prefer they to say “follow authority.” So much less bullshit.

And yet, I suspect that’s why so many people prefer to say “follow the science.” It’s vague enough that it’s not clear how you’re supposed to hold them accountable for mistakes, and yet if you press them on real science (such as data or scientific papers), they will deflect. They might even tell you they “follow the science” as if those words are a magic spell even after they’ve refused multiple times to comment on any real scientific evidence.

Not that people think about it consciously in those terms. Mostly, they’re just repeating phrases they heard other people say which seems like an easy way out of uncomfortable conversations.

I still wish they’d say what they really mean rather than hide behind a misleading slogan.