Ben Mann Monthly May 2021
Brown banana bread, doggies, far runs, NYC, the dark web, old and new friends
Purpose
An index for my memory
A menu of topics for my next conversation with you
A faster way to share what I’m excited about without the barrier of writing a complete blog entry on it
A skimmable way to spread content I found valuable
Experiments and experiences
Bishop "fun run"
A 21 mile race from 4k-6k ft that I didn't think I'd run. In the end I couldn't resist my friends' infectious enthusiasm. We acclimated in a cabin in Aspendell at 8k feet for the week before the race, praying that the internet would stay solid enough for our Zoom calls. Occasionally it wasn't. The 4.5 hour race passed quickly in one of the most beautiful courses I've set foot on. Old jeep roads wove between glacial erratics and desert scrub in the valleys between snow-capped peaks. My gear and hydration plan worked perfectly except for a little chafing that could've been prevented by some Body Glide. Noon in a 1-liter Camelbak in an REI Flash 18 backpack, Clif bloks with extra salt, Salomon Sense Ride trail runners.
Brooklyn summer
It's HOT in New York! I haven't lived here since 2013. It's just as lively, colorful, diverse, and trash-covered. We wandered the city for miles in search of the best coffee, ice cream, and pastries. We people-watched as we stood in lines, seeing little dramas play out. In San Francisco, the weather forces people indoors. In New York, the buzz of the city draws moths to its flame. One day we went to see the houses my parents grew up in. The current owner happened to be at mom's place and told us about some of the changes. Noting the large number of added bedrooms, my mom asked him how many kids he had. "There are two things you don't count," he said, wiggling his ten fingers, "money and children."
Pictionary
Board games seem all the rage at the moment, but I still like the old free-form games like Pictionary and Charades. You can either generate the words yourself by tearing up paper and putting them in a hat, or use this generator. It feels so much more creative and personal than games like Diplomacy where it takes an hour just to explain the rules.
5x brown banana bread
My friend Moses cooks down his banana juice for banana bread. Starting from my favorite recipe, I decided to go all the way brown: brown bananas, brown sugar, browned butter, brown walnuts, and brown chocolate. It came out delicious, but I couldn't taste the browned butter among all the other bright lights. Next time I'll stick with the coconut oil in the recipe, but I'll keep the rest.
Befriending doggies
For years, just seeing a dog made me feel afraid, repulsed, and resentful. Diana LOVES dogs. With help from my therapist, I realized that I can love dogs if I put in the work. After all, we bred them to be human-loving machines! When I was eight, dogs were bigger than me. They were often poorly trained, jumping all over me, smearing tongue slobber and paw dirt on my pants and shirt. I was already obsessive about cleanliness, showering at least 3 times a day. I was never bitten or attacked, but having my personal space so thoroughly violated was trauma enough. Dogs can be trained and and cleaned. I've gone two weeks without a shower and it was fine. I'm a different, bigger human now. It's time to reconsider my relationship with dogs. Visiting my aunt was the final test. I met her three 100lb labs, and rather than backing towards the wall, I knelt down and ran my hands through their thick fur. They looked unambiguously happy, and I realized I was too. The spell had lifted. After playing with them for a while, I looked at my hands, now with a thin veneer of greasy black dirt. A few wisps of the clouds of fur that had drifted off them still clung to my clothes. It felt like some sort of baptism. Maybe I can be a dog person after all.
Emotion rating {-3, 3}: mean 1, std 0.5
Highs: meeting old and new friends while traveling, going out to restaurants, carb loading for the race, finishing the race, not getting injured, binge-learning about beavers
Lows: having trouble actually taking vacation, sleeping too little
Life updates
Announced our new company, Anthropic 🚀
Doggie incoming Jun 13 🐕
archive.house, where I lived for 3 years, is shutting down 😭
Registered for half triathlon in September 🏃🚴🏊
Fully vaccinated 💉
Content
5 point Likert ratings for “I would recommend this content to a friend”, sorted
American Kingpin 4/5
The almost unbelievable tale of the founder of the Silk Road, the first massive dark web black market
The author did an excellent job making it real from all the records he dredged up. He even-handedly treated the competing ideologies of liberty vs safety, etc.
Most surprising parts were the internal politics of all the government agencies, and the implicit security tips from how they caught the pirate. I wouldn't be that surprised if they hid some of their more powerful techniques from the exposition.
The Nice Guys 4/5
Fun romp through the '70s beating up baddies and trying not to get killed before you solve the murder mystery
Just the right amount of woke to be fun; excellent acting from all parties, especially the leads; creative cinematography and dialog
Project Hail Mary 4/5 for engineers
Just like The Martian, follows a lone scientist trying to figure everything out in the face of overwhelmingly bad odds.
I LOVE it when the engineers aren't the cause of all the problems, but instead the people solving them. Why is it in mainstream media that it's always the engineers who screwed up and built the killer robots, or destroyed the environment, or sterilized all the humans? Sometimes bad stuff happens and we need to move forward. This is just such a film.
There's some weird gender discrimination side plot that is awkwardly included. Not sure what he was trying to get at with that one.
Some of the problems seem a little too constructed. For example, how can you have a space ship with no instruction manual plastered everywhere? This allows for lots of fun plot and experiments, but it'd never happen.
Breaking2 3/5
Nike funded this attempt to break the 2 hour marathon. Obviously, but still mind-blowingly, this means running for 2 hours at 13.1 mph, or 4:34/mile for 26.2 miles. I can't run that fast maybe even at a full sprint, so to watch these men at the top of their craft is breathtaking. The documentary was excellent inspiration for our own snail-paced race later that week.
Mamma Mia 3/5
If you like ABBA songs and Greek islands, you'll love this musical weaving them together into a strange plot.
Don't watch it for the plot. Just listen to the eye and ear candy.
Radioactive 3/5
The story of the discovery of radium, its implications for science, and the racism and sexism pervasive at the time.
Why did she keep sleeping with the vial of radium after she knew it was poisonous??
Surprisingly good characters and narrative arc for a history of science movie!
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba 2/5
Fun animation and characters but about as cliched and obvious as it gets
The baddies explained their plans ahead of time??
Maybe I'd have enjoyed it more if I had watched the anime or read the manga ahead of time
I read about an hour's worth during my race, but was floored with boredom and had to abort. It came highly recommended from a friend, so perhaps I missed something, or it suddenly gets interesting later on. Probably it shouldn't be read as an audiobook and is built for skimming.