November 2020:


I caught a glimpse of the new section of the Bay Bridge when I was driving over the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge. It seems somewhat funny to me that some people decided it would a great place to build a massive metropolitan area around a geographic inconvenience. To get around the Bay, you need to drive to one of the bridges to get to the other side. From Cupertino, there isn't a direct route to Oakland. Either I have to head south and the back North on 880, or I can take 280 up and cross the Bay Bridge.

New York City is similarly inconvenient. A few of the boroughs are literally on different chunks of land. Manhattan <-> Brooklyn <-> Bronx <-> Queens <-> Staten Island... Who do we have to blame? I guess the first "urban" settlement was New Amsterdam, so we have the Dutch to blame.

However, let's take a look at Los Angeles—a contiguous piece of land. Somehow we managed to make transit and traffic much worse. I think that makes sense given the car-based lifestyle of Californians. When I was thinking about getting to Oakland, I was thinking about it in terms of "driving." There is no practical way to use public transit to get across the Bay. Los Angeles should have better transit infrastructure given how much easier it is to build on land that on water...

Somehow, New York managed to connect all their disparate boroughs with a janky, but functional, subway system. I don't enjoy their buses, but it gets you places when you need it. I still remember eating crunchy finger grapes at the back of a bus that looked like it was a remnant of the 80s. It was almost 100 degrees and I had just left Coney Island. It was quite cinematic—in a rusty, smoggy way.

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https://news.artnet.com/art-world/pig-couch-craigslist-hoax-explained-1924990?utm_content=bufferf7ed0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=news

I discovered this pig couch today. I like how it's made from velvet—very smooth and soft unlike a real pig. They have these bristles that make for durable brushes. That reminds me of a video I found on TikTok of a pig shedding its hairs. It turned into a bald pig for the summer.

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Today, I drank half a bottle of champagne. I wasn't celebrating. I was simply consuming because I can and I want to. America is the land of consumerism, so I will gladly partake while I still can. Have you ever thought about how alcohol denatures proteins? Our DNA strands are probably being fried with each shot of Vodka.I learned via TikTok that tequila is one of the healthier liquors, so I think I will be switching to that...

I've been thinking about work a lot recently. Apparently, I am an entrepreneur—a word I very much dislike. It makes me feel like a dilettante. Anyway, I've been considering getting a job because I need money. Isn't it wondrous how we are in this giant rat race to accumulate enough capital to do what we actually love? Speaking of which, I was tutoring some kids on this SAT passage about "doing what you love", and the passage aptly pointed out that such mentality is privileged because some people really can't do what they love. It makes sense to me. In capitalism, someone has to do the serving. I'm just going to hop on the hamster wheel and run as quickly as I can so that I can take a break in 40 years and *maybe* sip on sparkling wine because I can't afford the real shit.