Sorry I’ve missed you the last couple weeks, but the truth is I’ve been quite the busy bee!

It’s been an absolutely chaotic time and I promise to one day tell you all about it.

But for now, I just wanted to check in and let you know I’m good.

Like really, things are great.

Just hectic. And they will remain hectic for the next few months.

Don’t fear though.

I will commit to getting something out…

Like here is a thought I had recently:

It’s not cool to be stupid.

There is this entire brand of comedy online where people self deprecate and the punchline is always like “I dOn’T eVeN kNoW hOw My ToAsTeR wOrKs, hardy har har har”

From what I can tell, people eat this type of thing up.

Being a fucking dingleberry is all the rage.

Like I was watching this video today where this group of bros was going around a circle talking about how they don’t know what a civil engineer does.

The video had 14,000 likes. Sad.

Just a revolving door of nimrods reinforcing the ignorance of other nimrods.

The kind of video which makes you feel like it’s inevitable that China takes over.

Now, I’m not saying you aren’t allowed to know what a civil engineer does. Actually, at first pass, that is funny because I’m sure a lot of people don’t know.

But the problem is the next part.

Like they just make the comment. That’s the punchline of the joke.

They don’t correct the person’s understanding.

They don’t look it up on Google.

They don’t ask ChatGPT.

Instead they just sit around and play circle jerk the moron.

They laugh, he feels good, and this, of course, encourages future ignorance.

Rather than reinforce people being dumb, I recommend we fight back and call this person exactly what he is: a loser.

Don’t be a loser and don’t contribute to creating more losers.

It’s cool to be smart.

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Always Angry,

K.Rapp

I missed last week. Sorry.

Admittedly, I had just come back from a bachelor party and my fratteries were completely discharged.

But even more admittedly, I’ve been finding it difficult to get back to the keyboard and write.

So to get back into the groove of it, I’m going to tell you a story about something which recently pissed me off — an infinite wellspring of inspiration for me.

I live in San Francisco.

Which is the thing I need to say so the next statement makes more sense.

About a month ago, a homeless encampment moved in three blocks away from my home.

It was quite interesting to watch it develop.

You see, first there was only one tent.

That’s how all cities began, I guess.

A trailblazer with a dream.

A visionary with a twinkle in their eye.

A maverick with an REI tent given to him by a guilt ridden SF resident.

But like they say “if you build it, they will come.”

So within a couple of weeks, five more tents popped up.

I must admit, this had me quite peeved.

I’m all for increasing housing inside of SF, but not like this.

Any sane person would be against this.

But in San Francisco, we sometimes don’t select for sane.

So instead we end up with people like the guy in the pickup who I saw delivering a truck full of wooden pallets to help fortify the walls on the tents in the new “city.”

Because compassion is doing your best Property Brothers impression and helping someone half ass a makeshift home renovation.

As a devout member of the Church of Karen, this whole saga really irritated me.

And the only thing that burned hotter than my rage was the open fire one of the citizens of this new complex had started in the middle of the sidewalk.

This rage got to the point where I decided to call the police since I — a law-abiding citizen and self-proclaimed good boy — know you are not allowed to block the side walk.

So I call the non-emergency police line and I said “hey there’s a group of people blocking the side walk. One has an open flame fire he’s burning right now.”

And do you know what the dispatcher said to me?

She said “before we send someone out there, do you know if they were blocking 100% of the sidewalk? Or 75%?”

I DON’T KNOW LADY! I NO LONGER USE THAT SIDEWALK!

So yea. They still live there. Nothing happened.

Except she was very insistent about getting my name written down. I was probably added to the “privileged people who we hang up on” list.

Who knows. Not going to call again though.

All I do now is just watch as evidence of other crimes pop up and I rationalize them away as OK.

Like “oh man that guy left his syringe on the ground! Bet he was probably just getting a botox injection for his migraines.”

Or “well I bet they have a really good reason to have those three dogs chained to that fence in the middle of a generational rain storm.”

Or “oh yea that guy has two children’s bicycles. Makes sense. Probably saves money on gas by using the smaller version.”

I love this city, but I don’t love the dystopian novel parts of it are becoming.

Parts of SF are legit uninhabitable. Designated by the city as parts of town where we just all decide to not walk through anymore.

If you want to visualize what these areas look like, look no further than the hit HBO show “The Last Of Us.” Because just like that show, these areas are only inhabited by humanlike figures who can only communicate by snarling and clicking. The only difference from the show is that rather than being infected by Cordyceps mushrooms, these people are pumped full of meth and fentanyl.

Because, again, we are compassionate. And compassion is about allowing everyone to do what they love…even if those things are hard drugs which hijack your neuronal reward circuits and guarantee that you will “die doing what you loved.”

And just like “The Last of Us”, another affliction is burning through the rest of the population: apathy towards a cure.

It’s hard to be optimistic that this will ever change given the ardent push back from the “compassionate” part of the SF population.

And without someone who believes a cure is possible, then I’m doubtful one will ever show up.

I don’t really have a point to this story or a call to action.

Like I’m not about to hit you with my 5 point plan to end homelessness.

I don’t know the answer.

I’m just a resident who thinks it sucks.

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Always Angry,

K.Rapp

The other day my wife and I took a 15-min Uber across town and 6 minutes and 32 seconds into it we made the horrifying discovery that the driver was playing “What Lovers Do” by Maroon 5 on repeat.

It took 6 minutes and 32 seconds because the first two times through that smash single, you are not really paying attention. All popular songs generally sound the same after all. But that third play…that’s when you can’t lie to yourself anymore.

So with 8 minutes and 28 seconds remaining in our ride, we were left thinking “do we say anything?”

On one hand, we were only 3 plays of a known song away from our destination and we were enjoying the silent dynamic between us and the driver.

On the other hand, we were bordering on insanity as SZA came back over the car speaker for the guest vocals.

We chose to do nothing.

But fortunately, it worked out for us as the driver actually figured out the problem after 2 more plays of the song.

So for the final 2 minutes of the trip we enjoyed a brand new song…which was of course “Memories” by Maroon 5.

Not my favorite ride, but at least I got an idea for a screen play out of the whole thing.

I can see it now:

Two passengers get trapped in an Uber driven by Adam Levine

“Marooned 5 Stars” coming this fall to a theater near you.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: How We Used To “Spot” War Planes Before Radar

Before the invention of radar during World War II, incoming enemy warplanes were detected by listening with the aid of "sound locators" that looked more like musical instruments than tools of war.

These radar forerunners, which earned the nicknames "war tubas" or "sound trumpets," were first used during World War I by France and Britain to spot German Zeppelin airships. The purely mechanical devices were, essentially, large horns connected to a stethoscope.

Learn more here.

LAUGH: Oddly Specific Yet Devastatingly Accurate Insult

LOVE: Stay Hydrated Folks

And Happy Valentine’s Day to all the homies!

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But also stay thirsty,

K.Rapp

The other day I got the email that you never want to receive.

As my pupils moved down the screen, I felt my heart race and I was overcome with a feeling of impending doom.

Because on that day, I was informed of the following news:

That’s right.

The culture war has arrived at my doorstep…

…or is this the greatest phishing scam the world has ever seen?

I mean who wouldn’t click this link??

Click in and now you are chatting with “Sabrina” a “Simon Fraser University post doc” who misspells every sixth word.

Before you know it, you are negotiating a hefty price for her to pull her publication from Gender & Society.

You agree on a price. Only catch is she only accepts transactions on the blockchain.

So you pony up 4500 Macaulay Culkin tokens and 23 NFTs of an impressionist nude painting of Emilio Estevez for her silence.

Whatever.

Better than having my employer open up The New York Times and be like:

What I am getting at is that I certainly thought twice about clicking this link.

But after taking the necessary precautions of changing my name, packing up a single duffle bag of clothing, and leaving my old life behind, I swallowed my pride and thought “welp, better find out what joke they took out of context.”

So in I clicked.

And you know what I found?

A PAYWALL

And not just any paywall, homies.

A paywall informing me that there are 108 ADDITIONAL papers that mention Kevin Rapp.

And for the low low price of $249 a year, I can own the entire set of Simon Fraser's A Series of Unfortunate Publications.

Fucking capitalism, bro.

So yea.

On an obviously unrelated note, I’ve decided to open up my Substack to accept donations.

I hope you will find it in your heart to pledge a recurring payment and we will find out what that paper says about me together.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: Quality Of Friends > Quantity Of Friends

Not to get all empowered sounding, but I agree a lot with this quote.

Unrelated, I also agree a lot with this quote:

LAUGH: Can Happen To Anyone

LOVE: Dope Nuclear Fusion Company

This is probably the most compelling company trying to make nuclear fusion happen.

Deeper write up here.

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All in all I’m just another brick in the paywall,

K.Rapp

Are you paying attention to what you’re doing right now?

Like legitimately are you?

That’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot recently.

So much of my life is run on autopilot. Even the little stuff.

Like when I go on my daily walk, I often times can’t even recall what was going on around me during that walk.

No recollection of faces, store fronts, or events that were happening because I wasn’t really “there.”

Instead I was engrossed in some form of media.

Headphones in and completely ignoring the world.

Who has time for taking in the new park they just built when I need to listen to that 1.5x speed podcast where an affluent white guy explains to me how to be MORE affluent and white than I already am?

The more I become aware of how often the lights are on, but no one’s home in my head, the more I have been trying to change that.

One experiment I’ve been running (pun intended) is to walk and just allow myself to do nothing.

No audiobooks. No phone calls. Just raw dogging reality.

And the most fascinating thing has been happening:

I’ve been noticing stuff that has been in front of me the entire time and I have just never seemed to notice.

Like this morning as I left the house, I immediately encountered a murder of crows.

Seriously. A God damn murder of crows cawing at me as I walked out the door.

It was extremely ominous. I spent the next block walking down the street looking over my shoulder to make sure that today isn’t the day the plague comes.

Crazy to think that if some omnipotent, higher being was trying to warn me about an impending plague, there is a high likelihood I wouldn’t even notice.

Fucking locusts dying in the fields and I am too wrapped up in listening to Tim Ferriss ask someone about their morning routine to care.

But it wasn’t just the crows I noticed, it was also the people along my walk.

Like I went into this coffee shop to get some of that magic elixir which cures all my adult ailments and I was met with three above average attractive, female construction workers.

Not like Ms. Universe level attractive. But runner up in a competitive state fair attractive.

All of them getting coffee. All of them wearing yellow hard hats.

Now normally I wouldn’t notice this, but today I’ve decided to be Mr. Mindful so I am keenly aware of my surroundings and find myself asking a very logical question: did I just stumble in on the set of a porno?

Part of me is now waiting for the sleazy shop owner to come on the loud speaker and tell everyone that the store is closing early for construction since they have got plenty of heavy drilling to get through today.

I didn’t stick around to find out because again these are mid level attractive people. This is not the type of porno where you would invest the time watching the 7-second ad roll and then hit the Skip Ads button. I mean you would be hard pressed to spend the time hovering your cursor over the thumbnail for these folks.

So I continue on back home.

Still in amazement of all the things I miss on a daily basis as I pass them.

Like that old business here. Or the new homeless encampment there.

Even as I make my way back into my own house, I’m fascinated by how new it all looks and even how quiet it is…hey. Wait a minute. The God damn murder of crows are gone.

What the fuck? Were these things legitimately just welcoming me to the day?

Did they leave because they had to go creep someone else out?

Or maybe they left because they’re little creeps and they heard about that coffee shop construction porno.

I might never know.

But if I pay attention, I might find out.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: The Creative Act

I started thinking more about how much attention I was paying to what I was doing after reading Rick Rubin’s new book “The Creative Act: A Way of Being.”

And the following quote was what inspired the title of this newsletter:

Material for our work surrounds us at every turn. It’s woven into conversation, nature, chance encounters, and existing works of art.

Super solid book. Highly recommend it if you do creative stuff. Or even if you don’t.

LAUGH: Parody Account Gets Prominent Morons To Reply Back

First of all, this account receives an A fucking + for parody names.

Anita B. Etin??? Are you kidding me??? God level word play.

Secondly, the comment section is a master class of bigoted stupidity.

You can learn a lot about human nature by going through the comments of a troll’s account.

People reveal who they really are if you pay attention.

LOVE: Your F-150 Is a Minivan

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Paying Attention I Swear,

K.Rapp

So you may remember that post I wrote about getting sick.

Well, here is an update: I’m still sick.

Yep, even after taking antibiotics, resting, hydrating, sleeping, and doing every God damn recommendation for sick people that they give you.

I’m now moving into Week 5 of being sick.

How fucking lame is that? Almost as lame as the name of my illness.

Yep, it’s known as “chronic sinusitis” which — and I don’t mean to impress you but here I go — in Latin means “hella long inflammation of the sinuses.”

Now I’m assuming most of you have never had a cold for a month straight so let me explain the additional care you receive after Week 4.

First thing they add into your routine is…absolutely nothing.

They do nothing differently.

There is no new exotic remedy added to my repertoire.

They just tell you to do more of the same.

“Do an extra Nasal rinse each day”

“Take an extra snort of Flonase each day.”

“That will be a $35 co-pay.”

Yep. That is the cutting edge science.

Well, not exactly the cutting edge.

You know what the actual cutting edge is? Allegra-D and Sudafed — which are 50% nasal decongestant and 100% legalized amphetamine.

Seriously. Let me tell you, I have never understood the value proposition of meth more than I do at this very moment.

Because first of all, I am in the middle of rewatching “Breaking Bad.”

And secondly, I am on a daily routine of ingesting low grade meth so I can participate in the capitalism machine another day with minimal hits to my productivity.

Really makes me think what I could do if I took high grade meth. Like I would undoubtedly change the course of human history if someone just gave me a hit of that sweet crystal.

But yea.

To review the state of virus medication in 2023:

You get COVID?

We can inject you with a vaccine which makes you immune to the virus or if you have it already we can give you an orally digestible tablet which stops the virus in its tracks.

Your sinuses are stuffed for two fortnights?

Have you tried taking meth?…Oh you have. Hm…Well have you tried taking MORE meth?

All is not lost though.

I actually saw an ENT doctor today and got a scan of my sinuses so I am hopeful that we are within a couple weeks of this thing being gone from my life.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: A Detailed Look At Copper Mining

A hand crafted, artisanal post by me

There is a large appetite for an answer to the question “is buying an EV the ‘right’ thing to do?”

Now inside of that question are many dimensions.

Like climate wise is it net better? Like if we look under the hood of the supply chain how green is it?

And morally is it right? Most of the raw goods manufacturing for electronics is done in foreign countries with questionable work labor practices.

Honestly, this is a hard question and I have been researching it quite a bit.

As part of my research, I’ve been trying to read more resources which have a conservative slant. Cause I know the libtard argument pretty well since that is both my slant and I am ever surrounded by intolerable, virtue signaling Californians.

The account featured below is one of the better accounts out there with respect to showing the behind the scenes of manufacturing raw materials.

It really is quite shocking how much copper is needed for sustainable tech:

Solar power systems use abt 5.5 tons of copper per MW (heat exchangers of solar plus wiring and cabling that transmits the electricity in PV cells). 262 GW of new solar installations between 2018 and 2027 in North America alone = 1.9 billion lbs. of copper.

And it’s quite cool to see the behind the scenes for copper mining which is almost certainly a raw material we all take for granted in our lives despite it being ever present. Like check out the trucks we need along the way to move all the ore.

Very enlightening.

However I definitely have problems with the framing of some of this guy’s posts. I find him mostly adversarial with a “gotcha!” type slant and he always brings things back to a “nuclear energy solves this” position.

Now I am quite sympathetic to the nuclear energy cause, but saying “nuclear solves this” is clearly some bullshit.

Even if you remove EV copper demand, its not like copper demand disappears. You will still have a copper supply chain emissions problem. And they don’t make giant mining machines which run on nuclear nor powertrains which could receive energy from a nuclear reactor.

No, all heavy machinery is run on diesel and petroleum so to fix this would require a significant change to the base equipment.

So its not as easy as “just got nuclear.”

But his point is well taken that a massive amount of manufacturing must be done to transition to a green economy and that manufacturing is far from green. I just don’t think the question of “what else could we do?” is answered well at all.

Anyway.

If you have any additional resources around this topic, I would love for you to send them my way!

LAUGH: Too Real

LOVE: Guy Wins Big On Egg Futures

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I’m Sickening,

K.Rapp

It was a big week in my household.

First of all, we are on the precipice of running out of salt.

Finally made it through a giant ass container from Trader Joe’s that I’m pretty sure we bought in 2019.

The world was a different place when we bought that salt.

Lewis Capaldi had the top song in the world. Taylor Swift still made good songs. And COVID was merely a twinkle in Fauci’s eyes.

(Just kidding. Having a little fun. Doing gain of FUNction research if you will.)

But seriously, do you understand how much commitment to having high blood pressure it takes to make it through an entire container of salt?

(As if my heart wasn’t already damaged enough by the experimental vaccine! Am I right?!?!1

Given my choices, I reckon I have about a 1 in 4 chance my heart explodes if I’m an athlete.

But thankfully I’m not an athlete so I like my odds.)

Secondly, we have a new addition to our household.

Yep, after 3 grueling hours of labor, we are now the proud owners of a TV stand.

Isn’t she a beauty?

And let me tell you, she made us earn it.

Like typically, furniture building is 5% following the instructions, 5% having the correct tools, and 90% emotional regulation.

But after the third time the manual actively gave us incorrect instructions, we found ourselves on the edge of sanity.

However, we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps, finished the job, and at the end, we looked back fondly on the experience.

Just a dash of struggle in our otherwise struggle-free lives.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: Quote About Writing Essays And Appeal For Help

Author and cartoonist Tim Kreider once wrote this about what makes a good essay:

I tend to think something might make a good essay if I haven’t figured out what to think of it, or how to feel about it. Things that confuse and bother me. (Maybe the sine qua non for a writer is being able to distinguish what you actually think, and how you actually feel, from the things you know you're supposed to think and feel, the opinions and reactions that are publicly sanctioned, and being brave enough to admit to them in print.) It’s more interesting for me as a writer—and also, I suspect, for the reader—if, in the first draft, at least, if I’m not sure where I’ll end up when I start out.

I would like to do more essays on things I don’t have an opinion on yet. Like the purpose of the essay is to form an opinion on it.

In fact, I have a piece I am working on about electric vehicles which falls squarely into this category.

I want to answer the question “how much better for the environment are electric vehicles?” where I take a comprehensive look at the supply chain of an electric vehicle and try to answer this question in an intellectually honest way.

Currently, I find myself in a state of “uhh honestly I have no idea where I am going to land at the end of this research.” It is actually quite a lot of fun.

If you have any resources you have read with respect to answering this question I would love to read them or even anything tangentially related!

Looking specifically for things which touch on the full lifecycle manufacturing of an electric vehicle.

Also looking specifically for either unbiased, dispassionate analyses or more preferably engineering or science based articles on the subject.

Most things in this space are written by neurotic lunatics who have fully immersed their personality in worshipping on one side of the climate altar.

Much more interested in someone who goes deep into the nuances.

LAUGH: Actually YOU Don’t Understand MY Struggle

LOVE: Climate Tribes

I really loved this piece by Nadia Asparouhova which goes over the different stances on climate which exist in the population.

She started out by pointing out the discrepancy between the way the climate field is perceived vs the reality:

…while the media still portrays climate as a simple question of beliefs, the climate field has long moved on to diversified solutions. Whether one believes in climate change is no longer the interesting question; now it’s “What do you think is the right approach?”

Then she summarized the tribes which is helpfully fleshed out in the following infographic:

Super interesting read which presents a lot of great nuance in something which is usually just painted as a field dominated by a bunch of pot smoking, hippies.

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Still Building Furniture,

K.Rapp

I’ve hit the phase of life where I don’t allow myself to use most of the things in my house.

Like the other day I got out of the shower and I went to use one of the nice towels, but then I realized I used a face wash which might bleach the towel so I said “oh no, I better not use the nice one. Not today.”

Then I went to my room to grab a shirt, but when I went into the closet I found myself saying “oh no, I better not use the nice one. Not today.”

So then I tried to drown the sorrows of my middle class existence in wine, but when I went to grab the bottle, I found myself saying “oh no, I better not use the nice one. Not today.”

I live in a museum.

Only a matter of time before I shrink wrap all my furniture and buy a fine China cabinet to use as a shrine for all the things which I don’t allow myself to use.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: Roman Concrete Is Better Than Modern Concrete Because It Heals Itself

Ok. So this is dope.

Material scientists at MIT discovered that the reason Roman concrete lasts so long is because it is made with a “calcium-rich lime clast” which gives it “unique self-healing properties.”

Seriously, this material has the same superpower as Wolverine of X-Men fame.

Here is how the mechanism works:

As soon as tiny cracks start to form within the concrete, they can preferentially travel through the high-surface-area lime clasts. This material can then react with water, creating a calcium-saturated solution, which can recrystallize as calcium carbonate and quickly fill the crack, or react with pozzolanic materials to further strengthen the composite material. These reactions take place spontaneously and therefore automatically heal the cracks before they spread.

The experiment they ran was pretty cool too:

To prove that this was indeed the mechanism responsible for the durability of the Roman concrete, the team produced samples of hot-mixed concrete that incorporated both ancient and modern formulations, deliberately cracked them, and then ran water through the cracks. Sure enough: Within two weeks the cracks had completely healed and the water could no longer flow. An identical chunk of concrete made without quicklime never healed, and the water just kept flowing through the sample.

What other incredible findings were lost to history?

What incredible technologies do we have today which will be lost to history after the experts die without passing along their knowledge?

What’s my name again? What’s my name again?

LAUGH: When The World Goes To Hell, Sell Cotton Candy

This is just an amazing photo from the middle of the storming of the Brazilian Capitol.

LOVE: How A Space Shuttle Design Feature Was Determined By The Width Of A Horse’s Ass

While the designs of the past may be a mystery as to why they are so good, they can also be a mystery as to why they are so bad.

A great example of this comes from a post my friend sent me on LinkedIn.

While LinkedIn is typically a cesspool of pseudo-inspiration drivel and posts which can only be described as “autofellatio”, sometimes you get an absolute banger like this post.

Now I would love to provide you a link to go investigate the source material…but I thought about it and was like “if anyone EVER forwarded me to LinkedIn, I would immediately unsubscribe from their newsletter because I don’t need to be visiting that digital equivalent of Hades more than I already unfortunately have to.”

So for your sanity and the safety of my follower count, I’ve reproduced the entirety of the post below. If you really want a primary source just Google the guys name and the text from the post…then question every decision you’ve ever made in your life such that you are demanding spending more time on LinkedIn.

From Dr. Joerg Storm:

The US 🇺🇸 standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used?
Well, because that's the way they built them in England and English engineers designed the first US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

So, why did 'they' use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England . You see, that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And what about the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder

'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)

Now, the twist to the story:
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature, of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything.

Pretty fun, right?

Wrong.

It’s really fun.

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Looking But Not Touching,

K.Rapp

So bad news. I have long flu.

More accurately, I got flu and then a sinus infection in succession.

But I prefer to say long flu because it rolls off the tongue and makes me sound like more of a victim.

And as you know, I love casting myself as the victim.

Which brings me to my next point.

Let’s come right out and say it…

This is a brutal outcome for someone who very responsibly got the flu shot this year.

Now, scientists will tell you that I was simply on the wrong side of chance.

Getting the flu was a “game of probabilities” and I was “unlucky.”

They are, of course, correct.

But that doesn’t stop me from emotionally feeling like its total bullshit.

In fact, my caveman brain is demanding I stop writing right now and make cave drawings about how we should prosecute Fauci.

That feeling comes from the fact that we don’t naturally think probabilistically.

Our minds are wired to think in deterministic terms.

So my initial reaction follows the logic:

I know I got the flu shot and then I had a bad go if it with the flu. Therefore, the flu shot was pointless this year.

Of course, this logic is flawed.

I cannot determine if the flu shot was unnecessary without knowing what the reality would have looked like if I didn’t get the flu shot.

Presumably it would have been worse! Maybe that version of me gets hospitalized...

But we don’t know that for certain because we can’t rerun the experiment.

Sample size = 1.

I can’t travel into the parallel universe where I didn’t get the flu shot. I’m not America Chavez in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”…but if I was Ms. Chavez, I would hop into the parallel universe where my movie didn’t exist. That would be the most ideal outcome for both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the general Universe Universe at large. Cause Dear God was that movie a fucking dumpster fire.

So in lieu of having the ability to warp space time, I instead look to analyses to tell me how effective the flu shot was.

Those analyses tell me “the flu vaccine had a 49% efficacy rate in Chile.” Which I think is good?

I don’t know. I don’t have a good intuition for what efficacy rate even means. But sounds like some people didn’t get hospitalized because they got the flu shot while others got hospitalized regardless of what they did.

I would much rather have cause and effect with 100% certainty. Much easier to understand.

But rarely are you able to perform an action and guarantee yourself a result…unless you decide to watch “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”, in which case I can guarantee you that you are going to want to spoon your eyes out after wasting 139 minutes watching a tired critique of the tech industry. We haven’t seen a lazy satire where Hollywood brings out all of its stars to perform in a story that validates its insular worldview and jerks itself off for over 2 hours since “Don’t Look Up.”

Anyway.

Like I was saying, getting sick is a hard pill to swallow. Literally. Like your boy is on a course of antibiotics right now to kill the bad bacteria taking up residence in my sinus cavity.

Evicting billions of those bitches with my anti-bees as we speak. Z-Pack gang, for life!

Unfortunately, billions of good bacteria have also been vanquished. Yep, we lost a lot of good men in the war on sinusitis. And apparently some of them were serving critical functions like “digesting my food.” Good Lord is my tummy in knots…which feels awful, sure, but not quite as awful as walking into Whole Foods and buying probiotics.

Like let me paint the picture for you.

I’m in Whole Foods. A profoundly frustrating place to spend any amount of time because everything is $8 more than it should be and they actively sell “The Modern Guide To Crystal Healing.”

It takes a bit, but I finally find the speciality refrigerator which stores all the probiotics. Yes. It has it’s own refrigerator…

Now I don’t know who is in charge of marketing, but let me tell you, every probiotics company has decided that the ONLY metric that matters to the consumer is total number of bacteria in the bottle.

THIS IS A TOTALLY MEANINGLESS STATISTIC TO ME.

Why don’t you just write “this bottle will make you poop good” or something in plain fucking English?

So I’m standing there reading completely nonsensical phrases like “50 billion bacteria inside each bottle!”

Like bitch, how you know that? Did you count?

I thought about drinking it right there and going straight to the return desk and saying “excuse me there were only 40 billion Lactobacillus in the bottle I drank. I would like a refund.”

That will show the 16-year old cashier who only works this job because his parents are trying to instill a strong blue collar work ethic in their son.

I’m joking of course. I raised zero ruckus.

Instead I sheepishly paid $36 dollars for 300 billion bacteria and rationalized it by saying “well actually $12x10^-11 per bacteria is a total steal…at bare minimum it was a way better deal than my new book, Crystals for Beginners.”

Now this is usually the point of the newsletter where I say “On to the newsletter!” and we go through a few fun links.

But I’m not going to do that today. Just gonna sign it off now and say Happy New Years to all you homies.

CLOSING TIME

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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?

New Year, Same Us <3

K.Rapp

The hardest part about being me is my propensity to trap myself into extremist opinions.

Like the other day I got into an argument with basically everyone I know about whether it would be better to have a hook hand or a peg leg.

As far as I was concerned, the answer was clearly hook hand and it boggled my mind that nearly everyone else fell squarely on Team Peg Leg.

After a fair amount of debate, I concede that Team Peg Leg has a decent argument.

(Though I still think they underestimate both the utility and sex appeal of a hook hand.)

You would think that experiences like this would lead me to be a bit more cautious with the positions I attach myself to…however you could not be more wrong.

I simply have a penchant for being extremely opinionated and — for some reason — people like it.

It’s my special gift that I’m meant to share with the world.

And for this holiday season, I would like nothing more than to share with you two of my hottest takes.

1. Nothing Is More Infuriating Than A Niche Famous Person Who We Continue To Make Relevant

Imagine the most important moment of your life.

The birth of your child. Your wedding day. The moment you landed that dream job. The day you found out you were cancer free.

Now imagine instead of being able to sit there and savor this moment with yourself and your loved ones, you instead were forced to take a photo with a Turkish guy who went viral on Instagram for salting meats.

This was what happened to the Argentinian soccer team after they won the World Cup.

Now soccer is an abysmal sport that could really use some foundational rule changes to make it even the slightest bit watchable.

However!

No one deserves the culmination of their life’s work to be shared with some egotistical meat jockey.

But it is not so much Salt Bae who infuriates me as it is what Salt Bae represents.

As of today, we have never been more at risk of making a mediocre person famous.

Salt Bae. Meghan Markle. Speed. Harambe.

Every day we plunge further into chaos.

2. Black Panther Is A Bad Movie

I haven’t seen the second movie, but the first Black Panther sucks.

Sorry. It does.

And if you put aside the cultural significance of it being the first Black super hero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you will realize how bad the plot is.

Allow me to elaborate.

First, Black Panther is a prince. Meaning from the get go you are asked to root for a monarchy. A monarchy whose entire claim to power comes from the fact that they rule a place which sits on top of a huge mine of valuable natural resources. There is no vote over who should rule Wakanda. They simply hand the power down from generation to generation with no mind to whether or not there is another more capable person within Wakanda who should rule. I couldn't think of anything less American.

Second, you are introduced to Wakanda’s unique strategic advantage over the rest of the world. You see, they sit on top of a mine of vibranium — a magical substance which allows Wakanda to build the most technologically advanced civilization on the planet. Now of course with great power comes great responsibility! So you are then told about Wakanda’s grand vision of what they are going to do with their priceless treasures and incredible technologies. That vision?…Drum roll please…DO LITERALLY NOTHING. Seriously. That is the Wakanda plan from the get go. Do nothing. Hide from the world. Pretend like you are a third world country and don’t have the most advanced technology on the planet. Because that’s what heroes do…But in reality, this is actually what monarchies do. They hoard the resources for themselves at the detriment to the rest of the world. Seriously. They have groundbreaking technology which could save people from life threatening conditions (as they show later in the movie when they have to save a Shield official’s life). They could theoretically provide us with enough energy to come off of our energy dependence from nefarious nations. AND THEY DON’T. Because listen, rest of the world. You can enjoy your perpetual Malthusian struggle and eventual climate change induced heat death. Wakanda’s good. Gonna sit this one out.

Third, you are introduced to the bad guy, Michael B Jordan. Jordan’s character is a black ops U.S. Navy SEAL who adopted the name "Killmonger." Oh wow that’s actually pretty fucking bad ass. But I bet his origin story is going to make me hate him…oh wait. It looks like Jordan’s father was murdered by the King of Wakanda. Oh well I bet it was for a good reason…uh. So the king murdered his father because he was planning to democratize Wakandan technology to free marginalized black people around the globe from oppression? And Jordan wants to…continue his father’s humanitarian work?? Hmmmm. That doesn’t sound like a bad guy!

So to recap the premise of the entire movie:

The superhero is a privileged rich kid whose capricious father murdered the villain’s father for trying to help people in need. The super “hero’s journey” is literally all about his struggle to maintain power over someone who is rightfully more capable than himself.

Netflix’s newest dumpster fire 'Harry & Meghan' has a more compelling hero than Black Panther.

And I cannot for the life of me understand how people see this movie as empowering. Like yea, it really is so crazy how he was able to be a superhero despite all the societal structural constraints of being born into the lineage of a monarchy and gifted a magical herb which grants him powers.

The only empowering part of the movie is how Michael B. Jordan’s character through hard work and determination takes over the crown of Wakanda and begins to enact change. Of course absolute power corrupts absolutely and Jordan becomes a little bit too murdery for my taste. But he was way more directionally correct than the do nothing Wakanda monarchy.

In my ideal world, they would rewrite this movie with the following changes.

1. Jordan would topple the Wakanda government and he would install a democratically elected government to lead Wakandan diplomacy.

2. He would open up trade with outside nations allowing everyone to prosper from their technologically advanced society as well as opening up an exponentially larger number of research projects to build technologies with their vibranium. Within a decade we would terraform Mars, desalinate the oceans to ensure droughts were forever eliminated, escape global warming with large-scale carbon capture technology, and genetically modify dogs to live forever.

3. He would install a televised American Ninja Warrior-esque competition to determine who would become Black Panther. Because it should always be about rewarding the best of the best.

Because that is what Utopia looks like, folks.

But no.

Instead we don’t get a meritocracy. We get nepotism. Power in Wakanda is all about who your father was. We are asked to believe that this Prince who is now the King is the chosen one. And we should be happy that this Prince was kind enough to open up some rinky dink outreach center for progress at the end of the movie. Like seriously. He opens up the Wakanda equivalent of the Derek Zoolander's Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good And Who Want To Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too. What progress! Such a feel good story! He definitely couldn’t have done more!

And that’s why Black Panther can suck it.

Because while most of you sat around thinking about how good it was, you forget about how great it could have been.

Anyway.

Hope you all have a happy holiday season and you get everything you desire from Santa or whatever other make believe present bringing fairy you believe in.

On to the newsletter!

✨ SPECIAL ANNOUNCMENT ✨

I’m not going to send this newsletter next week.

I know next Tuesday is not technically Christmas, but it is the “holiday season.”

I get it. You’re devastated. But come on, gang. It’s the holidays.

Do you even read your email during the holidays?

Not to shame you, but you shouldn't.

You should be ever present with the people who love you.

Like sure. I love you. Because I am a cosmic being having a human experience with an infinite capacity to love.

But maybe go talk to your loved ones or something? I don’t know. You’re an adult. You will figure it out

I will see you in the New Year, sport.

LIVE: Last Picture From Dying Robot On Mars

Four years ago, we landed Insight on Mars and it recently just took what is believed to be its last picture before it powers down.

Pretty cool. And in case you are curious why it is powering down, it is because dust is gathering on top of its solar panels.

So soon it won’t be able to absorb enough solar energy to maintain the requisite power to send us bomb photos of the Mars-scape.

LAUGH: Man Orders Nothingburger On DoorDash

This thread had me engaged from beginning to end.

LOVE: 12 Days Of Christmas Talks About More Birds Than You Already Thought It Did

Very bird forward song.

CLOSING TIME

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Merry Christmas (yea, I said it, come after me),

K.Rapp

I want to start today’s edition with a PSA.

Get your flu shot.

First of all, flu is bad this year. Like historically bad and starting earlier than usual (it is the red line).

Secondly, it’s hospitalizing old people AND children. Which is brutal.

Third, the shot is effective. According to the reporting out of the Southern Hemisphere (who just concluded their flu season), the flu vaccine is doing well against the dominant strain in circulation. For example. Chile found a 49% efficacy rate.

So do the right thing and get your flu shot this year, you selfish prick.

Sorry. I recently got my shot and one of the side effects is feeling like I am better than you.

It was odd being back in the office getting the flu shot. Like I haven’t gotten one the past couple years. Just fell out of the habit.

And honestly I was just out of practice.

Like I got there and they put me in this enormous chair.

So I was like “haha is this THE flu shot chair? Why is it so big? You got like Andre the Giant coming in here? My feet don’t even touch the ground.”

And the sweet female nurse paused for a moment and then politely explained how “this is a very standard gynecologist chair.”

Ended up leaving that appointment protected from the flu, but still very susceptible to sounding like an idiot.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: You’re Going To Love Working With Your New AI Assistant

Ok so listen. I don’t want to be this guy. I really don’t.

But AI is about to change everything about how you do your job.

Yes. You.

As the article below discusses, one version of AI is going to be “autocomplete for everything.”

Noahpinion

Generative AI: autocomplete for everything

This blog post is co-authored by Noah and roon. roon is a researcher at a prominent AI company, and he also posts humorously on Twitter. Because this is a joint post, we sometimes refer to one of us in the third person. If you talk to people about the potential of artificial intelligence, almost everybody brings up the same thing: the fear of replacement…

Read more

4 years ago · 228 likes · 103 comments · Noah Smith and roon

Whether you are a writer:

Noah imagines that at some point, his workflow will look like this: First, he’ll think about what he wants to say, and type out a list of bullet points. His AI word processor will then turn each of these bullet points into a sentence or paragraph, written in a facsimile of Noah’s traditional writing style. Noah will then go back and edit what the AI wrote – altering phrasing, adding sentences or phrases or links where appropriate, and so on. An iterative, collaborative writing loop where an AI coauthor masters different parts of the cognitive stack than Noah himself, not dissimilar to the co-writing of this article.

A designer:

Industrial design will work in a similar way. Take a look at any mundane, boring object in the room around you – a lamp, or a TV stand, or a coffee maker. Some human being had to come up with the design for that. With generative AI, the designer won’t have to look through pages and pages of examples to riff off of. They’ll just deliver a prompt – “55-inch TV stand with two cabinets” – and see a menu of alternative designs. They’ll pick one of the designs, refine it, and add any other touches they want. 

Or pretty much any other field:

Lawyers will probably write legal briefs this way, and administrative assistants will use this technique to draft memos and emails. Marketers will have an idea for a campaign, generate copy en masse and provide finishing touches. Consultants will generate whole powerpoint decks with coherent narratives based on a short vision and then provide the details. Financial analysts will ask for a type of financial model and have an Excel template with data sources autofilled.

Everyone is about to get an army of bots who will do a lot of grunt work for you.

Yes. It is going to make mistakes, but don’t you proofread or fact check your friends? Why would this be any different?

Seriously. You need to try this.

If you want to check it out, go to OpenAI and sign up for a ChatGPT account.

I guarantee that within 20 min of playing with it, you will come to agree that this is about to make work MUCH better.

Like look how easy it is for me to get work done now:

That is what productivity gains look like, people.

LAUGH: Look At This Photograph

LOVE: The Best Christmas Song

I’ve been getting into the Christmas mood recently so I thought it would be helpful to weigh in on the question “what is the best Christmas song?”

The answer is Dominic The Donkey (The Italian Christmas Donkey).

You can hear this holiday classic and so much more here at my Spotify Christmas playlist.

CLOSING TIME

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Seriously get your flu shot, asshole,

K.Rapp

Tough week this last week.

It started out with seeing the chiropractor for the first time in my life — which was a real “welcome to your thirties” moment.

I visited him because I’ve been suffering from “sciatica” which is an affliction where my leg sometimes feels numb.

He immediately informed me that this ailment is entirely my fault. Through some combination of sitting too much and potentially lifting weights with bad form, I injured my lower back which resulted in the disc in my vertebrae coming into contact with the sciatic nerve.

Joy.

There is no “fix this quickly” type solution. Instead, I now see him twice a week for the next three weeks where he will progressively realign my spine.

Bummer.

And it is definitely not my favorite experience.

Like I go there, sit on this table, and this guy who insists I call him Doctor — even though he doesn’t have an MD — places me into the shape of a pretzel and belly flops on top of me in order to generate the requisite force to realign my spine.

It’s like I was accidentally dropped into someone else’s kinky fantasy.

It’s definitely not my kink. Not enough feet involved to be my kink.

But that’s where the rest of my week comes in.

You see, thanks to the regrowth of some plantar warts as well as my fetish for both feet and doctors who don’t have MDs, I went to the podiatrist.

And good Lord was this a fucking torture chamber.

First off, I don’t know if you ever had your foot numbed, but let me paint the picture for you.

You sit down. A guy stabs your foot. You let out a little yelp. He apologizes. Repeat four times.

Secondly, the actual wart removal process is literally him cutting a hole into your foot with a soldering iron. And holy hell does the bottom of your foot have some fucking thick skin.

Jesus.

Anyway. Not the best week.

Just me eating a hefty helping of brutal strudel from beginning to end.

BUT!

Despite my numb leg and the open wounds oozing from the base of my foot, I still showed up tonight.

Because the show must go on.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: You Have Spoken

Thanks to everyone who replied back to my request for feedback last week.

Let me tell you, the homies have spoken!

And the replies are both enlightening…and brutal.

In reading through all of the feedback, the following three trends appear:

1. You like to hear my take. Yes, I toe the line of being a sensationalist from time to time…but you forgive me because the introductions make you laugh and I am mostly objective. There were several requests to give you more of my takes. Like you want to hear where I stand on the story de jour like the FTX scandal or how GPT-3 will shape the future. Or at least you do, provided I have done my homework and come with sources/links so you could investigate for yourself.

2. You like to laugh and be educated. Content that does this is something the people in the newsletter business like to call “infotainment.” It’s not surprising you like this because you are human after all. But to this end, the posts I write which you like the most teach you something and sprinkle jokes in along the way. This is why most of your favorite sections of the newsletter are the LAUGH and LOVE section. You appreciate me curating interesting, funny content for you.

3. You don’t like personal development posts. Like literally all of you. Crazy you just let me write those and said nothing. Why didn’t you say something? Cowards. I would write a whole self development post about how you could become more courageous, but you wouldn’t like that.

What a fun character building exercise it is to read feedback about your writing.

Like wow it hurts when someone says something constructive. Much more fun when people only tell you that you are great!

But overall, I am thrilled you told me what you really thought. And I am ecstatic that you want to hear more of my takes. As an extremely opinionated person, requesting to hear more of my opinions is my love language.

So thank you again for the feedback and you can expect to see these changes reflected in future editions.

Additionally, feel free to give feedback whenever you would like. Like if you had some unfinished email you haven’t sent to me from last week, why not just send it? Stop being a coward, ya know? Be the change you want to see in the world.

LAUGH: Actually Receiving The Gifts From 12 Days Of Christmas

LOVE: Transparent Content Moderation Proposal

The real problem with content moderation on social media is not that it happens, it is that when the banning is done, it is often done without explanation.

Here is a really great proposal for moving forward with content moderation:

I think the final solution for content moderation absolutely looks like more transparent banning.

CLOSING TIME

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Numbly Limping Along,

K.Rapp

The USA beat Iran and moved on in the World Cup today.

But what I found fascinating was the commentary surrounding the game.

When two geopolitical rivals meet in sports, we build up the significance of that game.

We talk about how a win for the good guys could bring a nation hope.

We talk about how a win for the bad guys would be terrible for morale.

But I believe we are missing the point.

A point that Jarvis makes beautifully:

Soccer blows.

Like consider this next generation stat powered by AWS:

The US played 3 games this World Cup and scored 2 goals. That is less than 1 goal per game. #stats

People. We tied one game 0 to fucking 0. 90 minutes. 0 goals.

Today’s match with Iran? 90 minutes. 1 goal.

Soccer is less goal oriented than that stoner kid you went to high school with who had an endless supply of black rock band t-shirts and always claimed he would do well in class “if he cared.”

But how boring the game was seemed to be a complete after thought.

Post game, the media exclusively focused on “inspiring” narratives.

Like commentators couldn’t stop talking about how “today…love wins.”

Give me a break.

Love died the day we started pretending soccer was a good sport.

Go USA though. Purely from a tribalism standpoint.

I’m a huge hometown team fan.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: Tell Us How You Really Feel.

I’m interested in hearing your pure, unadulterated feedback about what you think of Full Of KRapp.1

So please reply to this email and help me improve the newsletter!

Some questions to help get your creative juices flowing:

• What were your favorite editions of the newsletter?

• What were your least favorite editions of the newsletter?

• What would you like to see me write more about next year? Name a topic, person, place, thing, you want to hear me riff on.

• What would you like to see me write less of next year?

Don’t try to be perfect. Don’t hold anything back. All feedback is helpful.

Just press reply RIGHT NOW, word vomit anything that comes to mind, and send it to me.

It would mean a lot :)

LAUGH: The Forbes 30 Under 30

Every year, Forbes magazine posts this list of 30 people who are remarkable and just so happen to be under 30 years old.

The list is mostly rich kids whose parents funded their inclusion on the list.

But sometimes, the list highlights some soon to be famous people!

Like this list of 5.

You will find some well known criminals in there!

LOVE: It’s Shocking How Alone We Are

This graph should be a reminder to go talk to a friend today.

It’s never been easier to stay at home all day, but what if being alone all day isn’t good for you?

So go outside and hang out with a friend today.

Unless that friend invited you to watch a soccer game…in which case it would be far less depressing to stay home alone.

CLOSING TIME

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See you in the replies,

K.Rapp

After taking the last three weeks off of writing this so I can fully focus on my wedding and honeymoon…

To answer a few frequently asked questions:

1. How was the wedding?

The wedding was the best day of my life.

Everything from our vows to the wedding speeches to the DJ’s EDM mixes of My Chemical Romance to our officiant Jordan (btw you should totally subscribe to his podcast here) far exceeded my expectations.

Honestly it was just the perfect day.

I would love to share a picture of me and my gorgeous wife with you, however I also respect her privacy so I won’t post the pictures of both of us here.

Ergo, here is a selfie of me in my tuxedo.

Several people told me I looked like James Bond which you can be sure absolutely went directly to my head.

2. How was the honeymoon?

The honeymoon was amazing.

The Maldives are the most absurd place I have ever been. Seriously. This is the sunset I looked at for a week.

3. How is it being back?

Terrible! I had to go to work yesterday AND today…how gross is that?

Also it’s difficult to get back into writing this! Cause it’s a lot easier to just not, you know?

But thankfully I have a ton of content for you today.

You see, traveling to the Maldives required spending 40 hours on a plane in the last 2 weeks and you know what that means. That’s right. I am an expert on every movie the planes have to offer right now.

So in rare form, I am going to combine the LIVE, LAUGH, and LOVE sections into one post and spill a lot of ink on the definitive guide of what is worth your time to watch as you travel this holiday season.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE/LAUGH/LOVE: A Definitive Guide To Q4 2022 Plane Movies

As we enter the holiday season, a lot of you are going to start taking long plane rides to lackluster destinations in the name of appeasing your parents or your significant other’s parents.

Now I won’t sugarcoat this one.

That 4.5 hour flight to Des Moines in a middle seat in the back of the plane is not going to be great. You’re going to have terrible lumbar support, a crying child, and a stewardess who is going to be out of every snack you ask for.

But — thanks to the miracle of technology — all hope is not lost. You see, right there, buried in the headrest in front of you lies your salvation.

At the touch of your recently disinfected hand, this magical colorful box before you will serve you up a dizzying array of movies from the last 50 years.

So yes, you are 4.5 hours away, but worded differently, my friend, you are simply two movies away from forgetting this flight ever happened.

But there are so many options? Where should you start?

That’s where I come in (provided you are traveling in Q4 of 2022.)

Let’s start with the basics.

The Standards Are Different On A Plane

A plane movie is a different category than movie.

A great plane movie is by definition “a movie which is great to watch on a plane.”

This does not mean the movie is “good.”

Great movies can be bad plane movies.

Like Lawrence of Arabia is widely regarded as one of the best films ever made. However, LoA would be an absolutely TERRIBLE plane movie.

Why? Because yes it has good story telling, but it also has very underwhelming action scenes. If LoA wants to swim in the same pool of action movies as the Fast and the Furious franchise then it is going to have to put up a better action sequence than whatever the fuck this is.

Conversely, bad movies can be great plane movies.

Like Hobbs and Shaw is objectively an awful movie, but Dwayne The Rock Johnson is the GOAT of plane movies. He commands your attention and leaves you entertained.

For 136 minutes, you suspend disbelief and you watch from the edge of your seat as he pulls a motherfucking helicopter out of the sky.

Oscar bait? Absolutely not.

Entertaining? You’re god damn right.

So that is what we mean by “great plane movies.”

This Recommendation Will Be Meaningless In 2 Months

The next caveat is that the movies I am reviewing are available on a plane today.

Like the best plane ride of my life was when I flew to Hong Kong in first class and watched the John Wick trilogy one right after the other.

306 murders, 45 min of terrible sleep, a bottle of wine consumed in 8 individually ordered plastic cups, and one concerned stewardess asking a set of canned questions to ensure I was in a “reasonable” state to consume more alcohol later and I was in Hong Kong.

It was electric. But alas the John Wick Trilogy is not available on flights today.

I’d love to tell you the all time best movies to watch on a plane, but how useful would that be to you in Q4 2022?

Perhaps that is a post for another day, but as of today we will focus on the now.

So with that we can start my definitive guide.

Welcome Aboard.

The guide is divided into four buckets.

1. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)

2. The Despicable Me Cinematic Universe (DMCU)

3. The Tom Cruise Cinematic Universe (TCCU)

4. Movies That Sounded Interesting After I Read The Description

1. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)

✈️ 🎥 Rating: It Depends.

I would love to say every movie in the MCU is worth your time. But it’s just not true so I will go through the three that I watched separately.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

✈️ 🎥 Rating: A Great Time

This was the 29th piece of content produced by the MCU so I came in thinking this movie would be complete dogshit.

Like what are the odds that they are going to create a brand new world that doesn’t sound exactly like another Marvel character?

Can they really make another likable character that I want to root for?

Yes. Yes they can. I was straight up stoked on this movie.

It did a great job of building a new world inside of the already crowded Marvel Universe and they weaved together the characters speaking Mandarin throughout parts of the movie really well.

Little touches which nod to the culture like that are a very tasteful way to honor the fact that this is an Asian main character in an Asian oriented world…though to be honest I was a bit caught off guard when the first 10 minutes were all in Mandarin.

I sat there slightly frustrated and confused like “uhhh, is this entire movie in Chinese??? I didn’t sign up for a fucking reading assignment, bro!” But eventually they started speaking English and I was left to enjoy the rest of movie whilst pondering what an entitled jingoistic asshole I am.

Also the film begins in San Francisco which got some “go hometown team” type vibes from me.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

✈️ 🎥 Rating: 🐶 💩

DO NOT waste your time with this one.

This is a bad movie with a bad plot, no character growth, an unappealing villain story, and mediocre conflict resolution at best.

It’s cardinal sin is what every bad movie has in common: there is no compelling story.

You can tell that rather than focus on character development or a strong storyline, they chose instead to:

• Go all in on the nerd porn that is the “multiverse” so that the Reddit forums out there could get wet about the many ways to traverse parallel universes

• Splash in some new characters to check the representation box so they could get claps on Medium

Both of these feel like cheap heavy handed tricks to capitalize on the cultural zeitgeist instead of writing a good story.

Seriously. It’s a lot. Like the new lead female protagonist they introduced was a hispanic teenage woman named America Chavez, she has two moms, and the secret to unlocking her power was believing in herself. The only way that could be more in your face is if she lost her parents during the Jan 6 insurrection.

Now the “multiverse” concept really can be done well (like look no further than Spider-Man: No Way Home), but this Doctor Strange movie just executes everything about this so poorly…which is a shame since he’s the main character responsible for helping people travel into different parallel universes.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

✈️ 🎥 Rating: 🐶 💩

Listen. I love the Thor series. Like Thor: Ragnarok is a VERY fun movie and I would highly recommend that movie to anyone.

But this newest Thor movie is bad. Like real bad.

What it lacks in plot, it also lacks in everything else. The only redeeming parts of this movie are Natalie Portman’s arms and that scene where Chris Hemsworth is naked.

Seriously. Fitness goals for real.

Outside of the aesthetic appeal of the lead actors, I struggle to find anything positive to say about this movie. (Though tbh it does have some of that classic Thor humor which made me giggle once or twice.)

Even “inspirational” scenes fell flat. Like at one point in the film, there is a fight scene where the children of Asgard are standing up and fighting for themselves. This appears to be an attempt to instill faith in the viewer about the future. However, I assure you, this scene simply makes you lose faith in present day humanity.

Awful movie. It is the type of Marvel movie where I am still watching only because I want to see the secret credit scenes.

But — and again, I cannot stress this enough — Natalie Portman is so fucking jacked and she might be worth the watch.

2. The Despicable Me Universe

✈️ 🎥 Rating: Absolutely Watch These

Both the Minions movie and Minions: Rise of Gru are on flights and they are absolutely worth your time.

The Minions movie has almost no intelligible dialogue and it is still a rip roaring good time.

Long live King Bob.

3. The Tom Cruise Cinematic Universe

✈️ 🎥 Rating: Watch Anything With Tom Cruise In It

Dwayne The Rock Johnson is the plane movie GOAT, but Tom Cruise gives him a run for his money.

I’ve yet to find a Tom Cruise movie which is a bad plane movie and here is my field report on the three of them I watched recently.

Original Top Gun And New Top Gun

Original Top gun is a fun, classic movie and was a good refresher to watch before I jumped into the new one.

New Top Gun has a better story and is arguably a better movie. It is very clear from the beginning why you should care about the characters. They are training for a specific mission. And it has all these fun nostalgic call backs to the original movie.

It is also arguably the more American of the two movies. Not because one is more patriotic than the other, but because of how they dealt with the casting of the roles.

New Top Gun features a new love interest from Old Top Gun. So naturally I thought to myself “oh I bet the old actress died how sad.”

Well that’s actually wrong. She didn’t die. She was just deemed to be too ugly to come on and be Tom Cruise’s love interest for the newest movie.

Nothing more American than that, baby.

Oblivion

This was a really fun one which had a bit of a twist at several points in the movie.

A nice little “oh I think I figured it out!” Just to realize you never really knew anything the entire time.

4. Movies That Sounded Interesting After I Read The Description

Father Stu

✈️ 🎥 Rating: Good Movie, But Heavy. Need To Be In Right Mood.

Mark Wahlberg plays a boxer who becomes an actor who becomes a priest and let’s just say this one really goes on an emotional roller coaster (EmoRoCo). Even more brutal when you find out it is based on a true story.

I caught this one at the end of my 12 hour flight and I was too emotionally depleted for it. I could appreciate it was a good movie, but I was just not ready for it. I wouldn’t watch this one again on a plane, but would definitely watch it again on my couch.

Black Klansman

✈️ 🎥 Rating: Good Movie, But Heavy. Need To Be In Right Mood.

I got the feeling this was a good, powerful movie. But it was honestly just terrible for the plane.

There are a lot of very emotionally charged moments which are hard to process on a plane when you are 4 glasses of red wine deep.

Then there is the added complexity of watching this movie with closed captions on. After like the 5th time they used the n-word and it spelled it out across the screen, I got so self conscious that I turned it off lol.

Nope

✈️ 🎥 Rating: Nope

I don’t know much about this movie even after watching the entire thing. But what I will tell you is that Nope is a very horse forward movie.

More horses than you would expect for what I believe is a two hour commentary on race and social class.

Seriously. Very very horse centric film.

Overall it was very hard to follow. I had to rewind several times just to get back to the point where I was and find I still had no idea what was happening.

I seriously don’t know what this movie was. It was brainy. I think? There was a metaphor. I think? I don’t know.

King Richard

✈️ 🎥 Rating: GREAT movie. Highly recommend a watch

I never knew the entire story of the Williams sisters. Crazy to put into context the environment they grew up in and how far the odds were that they would get out of their neighborhood let alone go on to be two of the best tennis players of all time.

On top of that, it was wild to watch the story from their dad’s perspective. The vision he had for them from the moment they were born is shockingly clear and ended up coming to fruition.

The whole story is made even more unbelievable when you find out that he didn’t grow up a tennis player himself. He was just so determined to make them so good at the sport that he was collecting magazine clippings of how to play tennis and showing up to tennis clubs to try and sell people on the idea of coaching his daughters for free. Just so crazy.

The only issue I had with the movie was I really felt they did their brother dirty. Like they completely wrote him out! But the truth is the Williams sisters would be nothing without their brother, Sherwin Williams. Without Sherwin, how do we even get the lines painted on the court?

CLOSING TIME

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Enjoy The Show,

K.Rapp

I get married this upcoming weekend. That’s a pretty surreal sentence to write.

We started planning this over a year ago and it has forever felt like it was 6 months away until this last week.

Crazy how that happens.

After the wedding, I am immediately going on my honeymoon.

I. Am. So. Excited.

However, as I don’t want to be dealing with WiFi issues nor thinking dumb thoughts like “oh sorry I can’t make snorkeling because I have to get this edition of the newsletter out!”

I will be taking a break from sending the newsletter until November 15.

I struggled with making this decision as there is a certain unease I feel about breaking a streak of 116 consecutive weeks of sending it out.

But I also don’t like the alternative.

The alternative is me putting about 40 seconds into writing this newsletter for the next three weeks and you getting something that is just “meh.”

All in the name of me keeping my streak.

That alternative sounds selfish and stupid.

Selfish because I would only be doing that for me, even if it didn’t work for you.

Stupid because continuing to do this for the next 3 weeks when I really don’t want to would simply be me falling prey to the sunk cost fallacy.

I strive to be neither of those things.

So I will take my leave now.

I’ll talk to you again when I return :)

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: Take A Break

A hand crafted, artisanal post by me

Seriously. You aren’t as important as you think you are.

Take some time off to rest, recharge, and be present with the people you love.

LAUGH: Funny Six Word Story

A curated joke I found wading through the cesspool of the Internet

A Six Word Story is an entire story told in six words.

The most popular one was apparently written by Ernest Hemingway when he wrote “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.”

Gut punch of a story, but there is a new contender in town for best in class…

LOVE: Vase That Puts Out Fires

Something I have been loving

Super clever idea for an emergency fire extinguisher.

CLOSING TIME

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I’ll See You Later Or I’ll See You At A Different Time,

K.Rapp

You ever want to stop and give a stranger some honest feedback?

This happens to me all the time.

Like the other day I was walking past the women’s intimates section of Bloomingdale’s.

It’s not a walk I do often, but when I do, I try to linger for as long as I can…so I can source material for the introduction of the newsletter.

During this particular walk, I overheard a conversation between the woman who works there and an older woman who was shopping there.

It went something like this:

OLDER WOMAN: *very soft to completely inaudible voice*

WOMAN WHO WORKS THERE: “Oh so you have diabetes? So you have to wear compression socks? And you want some lingerie which works with that?”

Fuckin’ a, Bloomingdale’s lingerie lady. Guess Victoria’s Secret is out.

Now I can’t speak for this old lady, but something tells me she was maybe using her quiet voice for a reason.

So maybe you should keep your voice down, nimrod.

Unfortunately, I rarely follow up on this urge to give strangers advice. Especially when the stranger is a woman.

It’s hard to criticize women now a days without being labeled a misogynist. Which is a shame. Cause feedback is a gift after all.

The lack of constructive feedback to this demographic shows all over our society.

Like I follow this one former classmate on LinkedIn and she is really over the top with some of her female empowerment posts.

Every other LinkedIn post is like “Ladies it’s boss bitch o’clock! How about us moms fight the patriarchy today and breast feed in the middle of our QBR? Am I rite??”

I always want to comment “serious question, does anyone actually want to do that?”

But instead I succumb to my self loathing, guilt laden inner liberal and just end up commenting “yasss queen! 👸💅 ”

We would be better served if we started saying hard truths in public.

In fact, let’s start right now. And let’s go straight to the top of the most powerful women in the world.

Like let’s go after the Williams sisters.

I’ve long thought we need to put them in their place.

Seriously. We give them ALL the credit.

It’s always Venus Williams this or Serena Williams that.

But the truth is the Williams sisters would be nothing without their brother, Sherwin Williams.

Without Sherwin, how do we even get the lines painted on the court?

Worst part about that hypothetical is you can’t even Ask Sherwin Williams.

Speaking of paint.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: To Solve A Problem, You Must Understand It First

A hand crafted, artisanal post by me

The first real world engineering problem I ever worked on came when I was a hardware engineering intern for a car manufacturer.

Several car doors exited the paint curing process with bizarre cosmetic defects.

They had these wavy growths cured into the paint.

You could feel the ridges when you passed your finger over it.

We brought the world experts in paint in who explained every possible way in which the paint could form a cosmetic issue.

Then we did failure analysis and ultimately found that the paint DID NOT do this. This was a foreign contaminant with the material properties of cloth.

So we audited the painting line and found every single potential cloth source of contamination and removed them from the area.

Suddenly the defects stopped. Huzzah! Victory was declared.

…until two weeks later when the issues returned.

But how? We took care of everything?

So one of the line managers decided he would do another line audit.

And he found absolutely nothing…until he walked to another part of the factory.

That’s when it all came together.

Just as the assembly line workers for a separate station were leaving, he spotted one worker who took his sweaty gloves off and rested them on the oscillating fan to dry out.

So he went up to the guy and asked him “do you do this every day?” and he responded “well yea…except for the last two weeks. Since I was on vacation.”

Ends up the problem wasn’t an issue with the paint nor the people who worked the paint line, but rather just a guy with sweaty hands from another part of the factory.

This was the first — but certainly not the last — time I learned the most important lesson of my engineering career: in order to solve a problem, you must understand it first.

And this lesson has come to define the way I see the world.

I truly believe that if you understand the underlying mechanics of how something works, you can change it.

And that goes for losing weight, removing warts, or progressing in your career.

LAUGH: The Perfect Outrage Thread

A curated joke I found wading through the cesspool of the Internet

This thread is perfection.

For two reasons:

1. You cannot tell whether it is parody or not. So reading it is this constant sense of unease about whether or not you are in on a funny joke or reading the diary of a crazy person.

2. Regardless of who you are, you feel a strong compulsion to comment or react to it. We may never see someone put out better clickbait than this.

This is the Mona Lisa of the Internet Outrage Era.

When you go to the metaverse Louvre in 2067 this thread will be there.

LOVE: Why Quitting Is Underrated

Something I have been loving

I really enjoyed this article about why winners quit by former professional poker player, Annie Duke.

We lionize the person who toughs it out through the hard times and emerges on the other side. However, is this always a good way to act?

Should you always finish what you start?

This is a really thought provoking piece about how maybe the best thing you could do right now is just stop, but if you want the TL;DR this quote sums it up best:

“We fear that when we quit we are admitting failure—that we have wasted our energy. But we need to start thinking about waste as a forward-looking problem, not a backward-looking one. That means realizing that spending another minute or another dollar on something that is no longer worthwhile is a far bigger waste than whatever we have already invested.”

CLOSING TIME

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Understandably Yours,

K.Rapp

I’m a few weeks out from my wedding and let me tell you I’m excited for the “planning” portion of it to be over.

Absolutely stoked for the event itself, but the planning is just brutal.

You get an appreciation for the attention to detail required for events like this.

All the nitty gritty things you have to get right when you have a bunch of people show up somewhere.

But what you absolutely do not get an appreciation for is dealing with non-tech savvy wedding vendors.

Picture this. You have a bunch of vendors who you need to contact continuously.

One makes the cake. Another makes the food. Another provides the music. Etc..

So you have a TON of email threads which are opened throughout your planning process as you communicate with them back and forth.

And dear fucking God some of these people are TERRIBLE at email.

There are my classic email pet peeves like:

• Not thinking through what information I would need to have before helping answer their question

Like when our rehearsal dinner venue asked me for my opinion on table arrangements without providing context about the types of tables they have or a picture of the space to be furnished…

• People who call instead of email for basic questions

Sorry, but I can’t answer the phone at 2p on a Monday to tell you yes I think exactly what I wrote in my previous email.

But beyond my pet peeves, there’s even the simple things they get wrong.

Like I cannot begin to explain to you how many emails where the vendor only replies to either my fiancé or I. Never both of us. It is as if they don’t know reply all exists.

And best of all was the email exchange which happened with our cake vendor where they sent our order receipt to me and…some other woman I have never met.

The woman’s reply started cordial with a:

“Hi, I think you emailed the wrong person. I didn't order a cake. Thanks”

But it then escalated when the conversation continued with her copied and she sent a:

“Please remove me from this email”

Girl, I hear you. Cause I too can’t wait to be removed from this email.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: You Have To Be A Loser For 20 Years

A hand crafted, artisanal post by me

Everyone in the world spends at least 20 years of their life being a loser.

The only thing you control is which 20 year block.

Like are you going to be a nerd through college and take your heaping helping of swirlies?

Or are you going to be the guy who chased high school fame and ran PS 119…but now you work as a server at Applebee’s where you get terrorized by a group of 8th graders taking advantage of the half off fully loaded potato skins after 10p?

Now some of you are sitting there thinking “actually I made it out of high school, college, and post college as a pretty cool guy.”

Well. I have some bad news for you.

You are going to be a loser old guy.

Like you will be hitting the Denny’s early bird special, your grandkids will agonize over the idea of seeing you, and you will insist on giving out Werther's Original for Halloween.

You are going to be brutal, my guy.

Why? Because you didn’t serve your 20 year sentence.

Those are just the rules.

The nerd chose to front load being a loser.

The Applebee’s waiter chose to backload being a loser.

Choice is yours.

LAUGH: What’s Stopping You From Dressing Like This?

A curated joke I found wading through the cesspool of the Internet

LOVE: Scan And Sign Documents In Notes App

Something I have been loving

This is actually super useful.

CLOSING TIME

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Swear I Served My 20 Years Already,

K.Rapp

I’m on a diet because I’m trying to be fit as fuck for my wedding next month.

Honestly, the diet is not that fun.

The truth is that effective diets are you cooking the exact same food over and over and over again until you decide being pretty isn’t worth it.

Unfortunately, when you are trying to dial it in, there is no other way to do it than to cook basically all of your food at home.

Seriously, you can’t eat out.

Why? Because everything made by a restaurant is smothered in delicious oil.

For example, I just went to order a chicken salad from a place I like, so I pull out MyFitnessPal and find out that the salad has 270 (!) calories of oil. Unreal.

Calorie counting. Monotonous home cooking. Consistently lifting weights. All of this is in service of “being fit.”

A condition which comes with the plus side of feeding my ego, but the down side of using the bathroom more frequently than I usually do.

Seriously, all this fiber really got me going.

Like the other day, I went to the bathroom, took a shit, wiped, and stood up because I considered my business done for the morning.

Welp, one hour later, guess who’s heading back for round 2 of number 2? This guy.

Don’t mind me. Just getting ready for my wedding by participating in the renewal of bowels.

But it’s all good. I’m making great aesthetic progress.

Like as I get more fit, I can see more and more of my arm veins every day. Combine that with my proximity to Downtown SF and it has never been easier for me to be a heroin addict.

It’s weird how being “vascular” is desirable.

For one, it is a sign that you are suffering from malnutrition. So like evolutionarily it’s bizarre that we have “evolved” to find that “attractive.”

But secondly, “vascular = attractive” is body part specific.

Like having veiny arms, legs, or abs is “attractive.” That’s why you see commercials advertising how following their program will “melt off your love handles.”

But that doesn’t hold every where. Which is why you don’t see pop up ads promising you that their program will “finally allow you to shave off that last 5 pounds of stubborn dick fat.”

In fact, if you’re anything like me, your pop up ads probably say the opposite.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: Emotions Are A Gift So Stop Being Rude And Accept Them, You Clown

A hand crafted, artisanal post by me

Following on from last week’s post, I would like to expand on sitting with emotions instead of pushing them away.

So it SUCKS to sit with my emotions.

Like to recognize I am anxious and then just sit with the anxiety is BRUTAL.

Every ounce of my being wants to pull me away from it and towards some new distraction vector.

However, once I allow myself to feel them, I come to realize that my emotions are not pesky little things disrupting my productivity, but rather they are evolution driven adaptive responses to orient me in the correct direction.

Worded differently, emotions are my body’s way of saying “yo, we got some shit going wrong down here, could you take a look?”

Now when I feel them, I have a couple options:

1. Work, drink, eat, shop, do drugs, listen to music/podcasts/books on tape, watch YouTube videos, or literally any other of the hundreds of easy to access distractions I love to use to escape the present moment of my own feelings.

2. Try to figure out why I am feeling that way.

The first choice leads to a feedback loop where I eventually end up feeling even more anxious/depressed/angry/etc than I was before.

The second choice leads to finding the root cause of the emotional discomfort.

So really “emotions” are not the problem. They are actually a signal to help me find the solution to the problem.

The purpose they serve is that very often I come upon the following discovery:

“I need to do something and that something is difficult to do.”

As I continue to not act, my body attempts to make the cost of inaction high enough that I actually do something about it. 

It does this by turning up the anxiety or depression to 100 and saying “Act on this emotion or you will keep feeling like trash.”

Low and behold, when I finally do decide to act on it, not only does the emotional discomfort go away, but I am also left happier than I began.

That is why in my own life, I have come to see emotions like anxiety or depression as a gift.

Because without it, I would never find the energy to do hard things and I would instead spend my entire life keeping up with the Kardashians.

LAUGH: Short Guys Think They Are Tall Guys

Funny fact I found wading through the cesspool of the Internet

This is the real distribution of male heights.

You will notice that it is a normal distribution with the median height at 5 foot 10.

This is the distribution of what US men report when asked.

You will notice a distribution with a peculiar peak around 6 foot.

A peak explained by the phenomenon of guys who are 5’10” or 5’11” rounding up.

Short kings, stop lying.

Love, Guy in the 95th percentile

LOVE: Food Tastes Worse On An Airplane Because Of Science

Something I have been loving

This is just interesting.

It is crazy to think about how many things affect our eating experience.

The sound one makes a lot of sense. Like have you ever tried to enjoy yourself at a restaurant while some ambivalent couple’s child is having a breakdown at the table over?

Impossible.

CLOSING TIME

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Vascularly Yours,

K.Rapp

If you open LinkedIn right now, you are guaranteed to see a post from an acquaintance you met at a 2013 conference hosted at a Holiday Inn Express.

Without fail, that person will be painting your timeline with gibberish about how excited they are to ✨ start their new adventure ✨

And let me tell you, EVERYTHING now a days is an “adventure.”

Got a new job? What a crazy adventure you are about to embark on by signing into a new laptop from your home office.

Bought a house? Definitely taking some adventures to Home Depot.

Gave birth to the ugliest child I have ever seen? Going to be an adventure navigating childhood given societal beauty standards!

But seriously, these are not adventures!

Honestly, the time me and this guy spent at the Holiday Inn Express was more of an “adventure” than him making a lateral move to a slightly different payment processing company.

Like we had to rough it through that miserable hotel breakfast with the dry eggs and cardboard pancakes. I know they say Motel 6 leaves the light on, but I’m telling you the people at Holiday Inn Express are leaving the hot lamp on the tray of eggs all night long.

Thankfully they have that lukewarm cup of Dannon yogurt to wash down your adventure.

People used to go on actual adventures.

I wonder how they talked about it. Like do you think Clark of Lewis and Clark fame described what he was doing with the same language we describe mundane life changes?

“I’m so privileged and honored to be embarking on my next adventure of exploring the Louisiana Purchase with Lew! Big thank you to my mentor Thomas Jefferson for commissioning the expedition.”

I doubt it.

Instead Lewis and Clark explored both the boundaries of the United States and one another’s sexuality and said nothing.

Because back then men kept shit to themselves.

We need to stop this trend of toxic femininity now and go back to bottling up all of our feelings.

Shit is getting absurd. Which leads me to today’s post.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: You Over Consume Because You Are Avoiding Your Emotions

A hand crafted, artisanal post by me

I like to experiment with restriction.

For example, in the last 5 years, I have:

• Removed caffeine from my life for 30 days

• Removed social media from my life for 35 days

• Removed alcohol from my life for 40 days

Why?

Two reasons.

One, I like proving to myself that I can do it.

Two, whenever I enter these experiments, I am hoping to achieve some outcome.

Usually I read a book or blog post about how eliminating X from my life could be the ONE thing I NEED to feel AMAZING.

And I — like the good American I am — fall hook, line, and sinker for marketing that suggests I simply needed to know one little trick to become the best version of myself.

While there is something appealing to “remove X for 30 days and at the end you will no longer be fat/depressed/anxious/sad/lonely/etc…”, the truth is the promised result never stuck.

Instead, what I learned from performing all these feats of willpower is my problem was not the things I was consuming, but rather the reason I was compelled to consume them.

Take alcohol.

Online wellness gurus promised me that my anxiety would be a thing of the past if I just quit alcohol.

“Simply start with a 30-day no alcohol experiment and you will see!”

Oh I saw. And let me tell you, that promise is wrong.

Like sure, I wasn’t suffering from “hangxiety” the day after drinking anymore. But now my anxiety was 10x what it was throughout the rest of the day.

Why?

Because drinking was not the source of my anxiety, it was my solution.

As was EVERY other habit.

I was eating junk food BECAUSE I was anxious.

I was stuck in a vortex of social media consumption BECAUSE I was anxious.

All of these habits would — for the brief moment I was consuming them — elevate me to a nirvana where I was separated from the uncomfortable feelings of anxiety and it felt GREAT.

I could forget about the fact that I hated my job as I watched some bikini clad model walk the beaches of the Maldives.

I could forget the loneliness I felt as I raced to finish a 6 pack of Hazy IPAs in a race I started with myself.

And in the event I got around to experimenting with eliminating my known anxiety crutch, you know what I did?

I DEVELOPED A NEW HABIT!

When I experimented with not drinking alcohol, I started working later during the week and more on the weekends.

When I experimented with not drinking caffeine, I started exercising more than Richard Simmons in the weeks leading up to Pride month.

When I experimented with not using social media, I…started this newsletter lol.

Sure. Those are “healthy” addictions. But still addictions.

Literally my entire life can be thought of as creative ways to separate myself from the feelings of anxiety/depression/loneliness.

It is like Gabor Maté, a renowned addiction expert, says:

Addiction begins with solving a problem, and the problem is that of human pain, emotional pain. The first question is not why the addiction; it’s why the pain?

Worded differently, the question “why do I drink/eat sugar/do drugs/etc?” is a fucking stupid question.

You do those things because it feels AMAZING.

Like are you kidding me? Have you ever drank a beer or eaten a brownie?

Instant euphoria. If we put your brain under a scanner during that drink or bite, your pleasure center would be lighting up like a Christmas tree.

If you are feeling sad, is there actually any better short term solution?

Of course not. That’s why you do it.

That’s what I learned through my experiments with restriction.

I learned I can’t solve my over consumption problem with restriction. Instead I need to actually do some investigating into why I am consuming.

What am I trying to avoid?

Because if you want to get off the endless hamster wheel of thinking “oh this next fad diet/digital fast/New Years Resolution will solve my problem”, then you need to realize that it starts with actually acknowledging the emotion you are feeling.

Or you can go on another juice cleanse.

Because I bet this one will be THE ONE that fixes it.

LAUGH: British People-Ants Venn Diagram

A curated joke I found wading through the cesspool of the Internet

LOVE: Visualization Of How Many People Have Ever Lived

Something I have been loving

Have you ever thought about how many people have died?

Well if you haven’t here is a graphic which forces you to think about it.

CLOSING TIME

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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?

Tell Us How You Really Feel,

K.Rapp

I’m not feeling spectacular today.

You see, I had my bachelor party in Vegas this last weekend and Vegas is a lot of things, but “good for your health” is not one of those things.

However, I had the best time ever. 10/10 would do it all exactly the same way all over again.

Absolutely no complaints. And that’s a real compliment when you consider who I am.

Like it’s rare for a white guy to have no complaints. Like even in the absence of real struggles, we tend to conjure them up from thin air.

Like a white friend of mine this weekend was complaining about how he couldn’t believe he would have to wipe his ass with toilet paper because the AirBnB didn’t have a bidet.

He legit asked me how I get by wiping my ass with toilet paper as opposed to using a bidet.

How do I get by not power washing my asshole?

I don’t know, man. I guess I just take it day by day.

But in all seriousness, it was a weekend where you are reminded of how amazing life is and all the amazing people in it.

I’m super stoked on life.

On to the newsletter!

LIVE: Three Fun Facts To Wow Your Friends

Something to help you live better

One of the most effective ways to build strong friendships in today’s society is to be armed with an assload of fun facts.

People like people who know random stuff.

This is just how the world works.

So to aid you in your quest for world domination, here are three fun facts from the PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE which you can use to wow your friends in the coming days:

PAST: A Dog Once Challenged A Man To A Duel…And Won

PRESENT: Single Use Plastic Bags Are Much More “Green” Than Tote Bags

Suck on that data, entire staff at Trader Joe’s.

FUTURE: In The Near Future, Diabetics Will Have Tattoos Which Change Color When They Have Elevated Glucose Levels

The tattoos will also be able to alert you about someone’s pH levels, which I imagine is useful for helping identify basic bitches.

LAUGH: The Reaction Video To Falling Dominoes That You Didn’t Know You Needed To See

Something to help you laugh harder

LOVE: San Francisco Commercial Real Estate Is A Disaster

Something I loved because I thought it was really well done

We are in a recession.

And while everyone is bracing for impact, some industries are bracing WAY harder than others.

Like there has arguably never been a worse time to be in the commercial real estate business — an industry which took an ass whooping during the pandemic.

But even more specifically, there has NEVER been a worse time to be in the San Francisco commercial real estate business.

As can be seen in the following article about San Francisco commercial real estate, we appear to be in for a bumpy ride.

San Francisco is an extremely tech heavy city — meaning that everyone who works here possesses the ability to work at home often.

How often do they work from home?

data from key card company Kastle Systems indicat(es) that SF’s downtown offices are only about 30% full. 

Yikes…this obviously isn’t very good for an industry where the entire model is selling people space to work that is not their home.

This absolutely matches my lived experience as a San Francisco resident. Never before has the downtown been more empty.

And the hollowing out is projected to get worse:

Citing data from real estate firm JLL, SF’s chief economist Ted Egan tagged future vacancies, in a worst case scenario, as high as 53% in the Jackson Square area and 43% in the mid-Market area in 2024 as the clock runs out on office leases.

Quite frankly, it’s hard to imagine a more empty center of the city than right now.

SF used to have a bustling downtown full of lively action and productive human activity, but now the area is either a ghost town or filled with homeless people doing drugs. That is not a Fox News hot take, it is reality.

(FWIW the other parts of the city where people actually live are still pretty fucking dank.)

Now this is obviously concerning from a shear “aw shucks no one lives here anymore” perspective, however it gets much worse when you pop open the hood and think about how cities actually make money.

Cities collect taxes. Very simplistically, taxes are proportional to the value of real estate. Thus, when your commercial real estate property values crash, the money you expect to collect also crashes.

And, uh, boy are they projected to crash in SF.

So what does this mean in terms of tangible money that the SF government is about to lose? Well, according to our completely inept municipal government:

The city’s budget office expects property tax revenues to continue to grow.

But if you were to ask an actual person who can do math, you would get a much different answer:

Howard Chernick, an economics professor at Hunter College and co-author of the report that forecast an up to 43% decline in SF’s property values, paints a much worse picture: His team sees a decline of up to 15% in property tax collections amounting to a roughly 4% drop in total revenues.

Based on the most recent numbers, that would mean a decline of roughly $240 million annually. And because tax revenues on average increased steadily each year since the Great Recession, any drop could be painful for a city that banks on growth to pay for an array of services and a workforce of roughly 35,000. 

So now we get to the “why does it matter that you don’t have people working in Downtown SF.”

It matters because all the infrastructure and every service we rely on in the city depends on that money.

Like think about it. What does SF — a city which already has a very underwhelming public transit system, cleanliness standards, and ability to deal with the growing homeless population — look like when you remove $240 million annually?

I really like San Francisco and I am rooting for its comeback, but I do think the next few years might be a bit…rocky.

CLOSING TIME

A call to action to help me build a community of homies

You don’t have to go home, but you can subscribe here:

Subscribe now

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?

Seriously. How fun were those facts?

K.Rapp