Blackcap Blog

Published at 20:38 on 28 May 2014

Since I missed out on being one seller’s doormat, there hasn’t been anything even remotely of interest come on the local market until this week. Now there’s things of interest, but only remotely.

One is in an area of 4-plex condos that I’d actually jump on in a heartbeat if the right one came up. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of the right ones. Instead of backing onto a pond like some of its neighbors, it backs onto a commercial parking lot, complete with dumpsters. Which means commercial trash collection making enough noise to raise the dead at or before 6AM at least twice a week. No thanks.

The other is actually right next door to the one I linked about in the first paragraph, and is in fact its floor plan an exact mirror image of the other. However, its the interior is nowhere near as tasteful, and the seller is asking $31,000 more for it than his or her neighbor did. Because, of course, it’s almost-brand-new banality and he/she expects to get his/her money back. The latter may happen, but it won’t happen with my money; the only way I’ll make an offer on this property is if it sits unsold for a while, then I’ll make a lowball one.

And frankly, it’s not $31K nicer even if one discounts aesthetics and rates the two interiors the same. It’s about the same age as the other interior. So it looks like this seller is looking for a doormat, too.

Published at 20:20 on 28 May 2014

Once you start getting these in the mail, you are officially “old”.

 

Actually, I’m surprised it took that long. I’ve heard they typically show up before one’s 50th birthday. This didn’t show up until after my 51st.

And I plan on joining, because the AARP is one of the more effective lobbying organizations fighting against proposals to gut Social Security.

 

Published at 09:20 on 22 May 2014

You’ve helped to cement my move out of your city that I made last year by helping to ensure that I won’t be moving back any time soon, thanks to making the sort of housing that would appeal to me illegal to build.

I’ve never really been able to understand this Seattle mindset that there’s basically only two types of housing that residents should be offered: large houses on large lots and apartments/condos crammed up against busy streets. And if you don’t want (or cannot afford) the former (what’s wrong with you, weirdo?), then you deserve the latter. It’s an attitude that befits a neurotic suburb, not a major city.

Oh well, good riddance.

Published at 12:39 on 3 May 2014

I made a strong and generous offer on a condo that actually met most of my standards yesterday. It was not accepted.

So be it. It’s a competitive market for buyers, so I’m willing to make strong offers promptly. I am not, however, willing to be a seller’s doormat.

This particular seller wanted an open-ended rent-back at generous terms (basically, I’d run a slight loss while she was my tenant). If that’s the sort of crap I have to agree to in order to become a homeowner in today’s market, I don’t want to be one.

Mind you, I’m not giving up quite yet. I’m still keeping an eye on the market and will make offers on other suitable properties as they become listed.

But if I keep running into stuff like this, forget it. Ownership is merely a tool, not an end goal. Other tools exist.

Published at 13:45 on 2 May 2014

Here’s some comments on this gallery of photos released by the Establishment media. I hope they don’t add or delete pictures and thereby change the numbering. I suppose I could have mirrored them here, but that would have taken time, particularly if I had mirrored the captions (which are truly required as part of this critique).

No. 3. This is missing the context of what happened. The “superheroes” decided to first attack the protesters (myself amongst them) without warning or any apparent provocation. Note the partial view of the red “superhero” 3/4 of the way up and left of center; he had just charged without warning. The purple one was being tackled before he could likewise charge. I know; I was there. That’s my bicycle in the picture.

No. 7. Note the passive voice, as if the pepper spray suddenly materialized as a force of nature out of nowhere, sprayed by nobody.

No. 15 is actually pretty fair; it talks about “a protester” smashing the window, not “an anarchist”. Yes, there were many anarchists in that crowd, but that march had no political affinity test one had to pass to be eligible to participate in it, and a fair number had decided on the spur of the moment to participate. Absent a positive identification of the individual who damaged that window, and his or her political orientation, it’s not possible to say if it was smashed by an anarchist or not. I assume here that the window actually was smashed, and not damaged in some previous incident well prior to the march; perhaps I am being overly generous in my assumption.

No. 18. A “tussle”. No, he attacked without warning.

No. 22. Note the street sign in the background: 6th Avenue. That’s west of the Convention Center, where the attack pictured in No. 3 took place. The march was heading west at the time. So that photo was post-attack, an attack by the individual being flipped off. Offensive though it may be, a raised middle finger is not a violent act and is in fact protected free expression, and the context in which that gesture was made means it actually showed a degree of restraint (an obscene gesture was made, instead of a retaliatory attack).

No. 31. But why were the media censored? They don’t say. Answer: corporate media have shared their full footage with law enforcement in the past. So their cameras are effectively police spy cameras.

No. 41. This guy looks more “stunned” than “enraged” to me. If he was “screaming” wouldn’t his mouth be wide open? Instead he appears to be biting his lip in restraint.

No. 46. This caption actually appears to be fair. So far as I could tell, the driver of that car was not acting aggressively; it merely got caught up in the march (such things are bound to happen on unpermitted marches). I didn’t like the jumping on cars bit myself. (I also didn’t see much of it; basically this once and that was it.)

Published at 22:23 on 1 May 2014

I’m 51 years old, I marched in both the permitted immigrants’-rights rally and the unpermitted anarchist/anti-capitalist one. I wore black and chanted anarchist slogans.

I am hardly perfect, nor in my estimation particularly effective, but I have not sold out. Quite the contrary; I’m more radical now than I was in my twenties. Not because I sought out radicalism as a goal but I kept observing the world around me and thinking fearlessly about it.

In short, I am winning.I am winning because I have not sold my life away. Yes, I have a professional job that pays well, but my career is merely something I do to get by in this world, not my identity. The high-tech salary the system pays me can buy my labor but it can’t buy me. My mind is still my own, and I do not love Big Brother.

I could write many more things about today, but this will suffice for now.

Published at 08:59 on 26 April 2014

This recipe actually works. Something persuaded me to try it over the other recipes for vegan crêpes that I found, despite it having no egg substitute whatsoever in it. The one thing to beware of is not to flip them too early; heed the comments about waiting until they are mostly dry and just starting to brown at the edges before flipping.

As for the chocolate suggestion: close, but no cigar. Right family and right latitudinal range, but wrong hemisphere and of course wrong genus and species. The perfect crêpe filling is from genus Durio, not genus Theobroma.

A big plus is that, unlike chocolate, durian is delicious just as it is: luscious, sweet, creamy, and intensely flavorful. No need to dump lots of refined sugar and vanilla into it in an attempt (never completely successful) to cover up intense bitterness. Another plus, if like me you’re a White guy in his fifties, is blowing people’s minds. You get some pretty good doses of incredulity when purchasing the requisite ingredient at an Asian market, typically an astonished “You like that?” from the clerk.

I think I’ve figured out some of the magic of durian. It’s the combination of intense flavor and intense sweetness. I have a sweet tooth, like all primates. It’s something that’s evolved to make us crave fruits, which have necessary vitamins.

Furthermore, I have personally always loved intense flavors. Candied ginger has always been one of my favorite candies ever since a little tot, when a great-grandmother gave me some in response to my pleading after my grandmother advised: “Just give him a little piece, Nana. He’ll try it, he’ll cry, and then he’ll not pester us again for it.” No such luck. I devoured it and said “More!” From then on, whenever they had tea when I was visiting, they had to share a piece of candied ginger with me. When I got a little older, I would also raid the spices and extracts cabinet and sample said goods directly because I loved how intense the flavors were.

One of my fonder elementary-school memories was when a schoolmate was attempting to play practical jokes at recess by getting his classmates to try eating whole cloves. He made the mistake of picking me as his first mark, and one of my best friends (Indonesian, and thus used to spicy cooking at home) as his second. We both knew what cloves were because we would both occasionally eat them as-is for the flavor, so we both accepted the prankster’s gifts, ate them with appreciation, and asked for seconds. This of course got the jokester thinking that maybe cloves weren’t so strong-flavored after all and maybe someone had played a joke on him by saying they were. We saw him sneak off and pop one into his mouth, followed by immediate signs of distress and pleading with a teacher to be let in early because he was “very thirsty.”

But I digress. I love both sweetness and intense flavors. I don’t know the exact mechanism by which it happens, but durian is both intensely sweet and intensely flavorful, simultaneously. That’s something that’s normally not possible (in most desserts the sweetness wins to the detriment of the flavor). It’s probably related to how durian can, unlike pretty much any other food, taste so different from how it smells (surprisingly delicate given how intensely pungent it can be). However it is accomplished, it is for me a magical combination.

Moreover, most things as sweet as durian come with a evil, nasty refined-sugar buzz as a side-effect. But durian is a natural fruit; there is no refined sugar, so there is no nasty sugar buzz. Quite the contrary: it’s high in tryptophan, so instead of a sugar buzz there’s this nice, relaxed, gentle, blissed-out feeling that lingers. And being a natural fruit it’s actually nutritious and good for you, instead of being simply empty calories.

On top of the those aspects, the consistency is right, too. Unusual for a fruit, durian is high in fat. Plus in the USA it will (alas) always be frozen and never fresh wherever you find it, so it will be very soft and mushy when thawed. So it’s naturally the consistency of custard or Boston creme filling anyhow. Perfect for using as a filling for something.

Published at 11:49 on 7 April 2014

So, I’ve been on the Island for a year it’s lease renewal time for me. I have two options: a normal lease at $1400/mo, or month-to-month at $1600/mo. The penalty for breaking a lease early is a fixed $1500/mo.

Wow, a fixed penalty of $1500/mo that’s less than the normal rent of $1600/mo without a lease. It seems like a no-brainer. Not so fast! Time to run the math.

The way to do it is with what is called expected value, essentially a weighted average taken by enumerating all possible scenarios then multiplying a scenario’s cost by its probability. After much thought, I chose a Poisson distribution with λ = 4 months as an educated guess.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the local real estate market and I actually think it will be more like three months, but I’m being a little pessimistic in case the entire spring and summer fly by and I end up buying nothing. In that case, things will get dead in the coming winter.  So, given those assumptions, here’s what happens when I find a home so many months into my continuing tenancy here:

MONTH       PROB        CUM      LEASE     M-to-M
    1     0.0183     0.0183    1427.47    1600.00
    2     0.0733     0.0916    1484.25    1575.54
    3     0.1465     0.2381    1491.58    1462.45
    4     0.1954     0.4335    1359.71    1230.32
    5     0.1954     0.6288    1086.19     917.64
    6     0.1563     0.7851     754.07     603.03
    7     0.1042     0.8893     457.11     350.16
    8     0.0595     0.9489     244.25     180.90
    9     0.0298     0.9786     116.24      83.83
   10     0.0132     0.9919      49.76      35.13
   11     0.0053     0.9972      11.39      13.41
   12     0.0019     0.9991       6.67       4.70
TOTAL                          8488.69    8057.11

PROB is the probability I will find something that month and CUM is the cumulative probability (i.e. the chance I find something that month or in an earlier month). Odd; what’s going on here?

The issue is the percentage cost. $1500 isn’t much a chunk of 11 month’s rent, but as time goes on, it becomes a bigger and bigger chunk of the remaining rent if one quits early:

MONTH %PENALTY
    1     9.74
    2    10.71
    3    11.90
    4    13.39
    5    15.31
    6    17.86
    7    21.43
    8    26.79
    9    35.71
   10    53.57
   11   100.00
   12     0.00

Why 100% instead of 107.14% for quitting in month 11? Simple: only a fool would pay $1500 in penalty fees when it’s cheaper to pay $1400 to rent an unneeded, empty apartment for an extra month.

Still feel like I’m pulling my own leg here, using lots of math when common sense says it must be the other way? Consider the case where I find something in five months (that’s the point where the odds become in my favor of finding something).

With a lease, I pay 5 × $1400 + $1500 = $8500.

With no lease, I pay 5 × $1600 = $8000.

Sure, there’s a chance I’ll pay more, if I end up spending another year here and not finding anything. But the odds seem to be in favor of my paying less. In fact, the lease is only to my advantage if it takes eight or more months to do something I expect to do in four or five months.

Mine is a corporate landlord; doubtless they’ve run this sort of analysis themselves and deliberately crafted their lease-renewal offer to have a seductive yet economically disadvantageous option to it, knowing they can expect to pocket on average around $400 of pure profit each time they sucker a tenant into agreeing to it.

Published at 08:07 on 26 March 2014

The nations where it’s the most popular and beloved — Singapore and Malaysia — happen to both be repressed, right-wing, authoritarian sorts of places with a very harsh attitudes towards illegal drugs. Yet they’re both nations of junkies, where an addicting substance, capable of producing euphoria in those who consume it, is sold openly in the streets, even to children.

One would think the general lack of harm caused by this one substance might help promote tolerance for consenting adults to engage in other sorts of voluntary, pleasurable activity (tellingly, both nations are also repressive to those of us who are not heterosexual). But, no.

Never underestimate the ability of hypocrites to rationalize double standards.

Published at 21:02 on 25 March 2014

About five years ago I happened across a bag of durian candy in an Asian market. That piqued my curiosity: Many Westerners describe its odor and taste in most unflattering terms, it can’t be that bad, can it? Moreover, I’ve always tended to like strange and strong flavors, so maybe I’ll be one of those Westerners who actually likes durian. After all, all humans are the same species; there’s very little difference between the “races”, really. Race is a socially-defined construct, not a biological one.

So anyhow, I bought it. And they weren’t bad. Sort of disappointing, in fact; I had expected a stronger taste. As I recall they were sort of pleasingly vanilla and caramel flavored. They were certainly not in the slightest way repulsive (as I later learnt many Western palates found such candies).

That prompted me to purchase some frozen durian meat and try it with a friend. That was anticlimactic; sort of vaguely sweet and mild-flavored, with an oniony aftertaste and only a slight whiff of pungency. (In retrospect, it was probably underripe.) Perhaps something suited to going in an Asian dessert like sticky rice where I could mix well with other flavors, thought I.

Fast forward several years to last week, and for some reason I’m craving that sweetness and oniony aftertaste. Plus there’s a pot luck coming up. A perfect excuse to make a trip to an Asian market and purchase the ingredients for durian sticky rice.

But something was different this time. On the ferry ride home a very strong pungent odor became evident. Not vile, but definitely very strong and assertive. Yes, it was the durian flesh, even though it was still over 90% frozen and sealed inside two layers of plastic! Oh, dear. People were giving me evil glances. Apparently this sample of flesh is ripe, and the rumored pungency is no rumor.

I get home, put it inside a Ziploc bag, and stick it in the refrigerator, hoping the apartment doesn’t get too fragrant overnight. The extra layer worked. Mostly.

One of the things I do when cooking is conduct “quality control assays,” i.e. I sample all the ingredients as I go. That includes the now completely thawed durian flesh. Wow, vanilla custard. Then onion. Almost completely unlike the pungent odor, which of course has completely filled my apartment. Did it really do that, go from sweet to savory like that? I must taste it again and see. Yes, it does. The urge to eat more gets stronger, not weaker. But I only have as much as the recipe calls for, so I restrain myself until the recipe is complete, then conduct numerous “quality control assays” throughout the batch of sticky rice.

Must… stop…; I’m supposed to be sharing this and what with all the coconut milk it’s way too rich for me to just pig out on myself, anyhow.

So, anyhow, at the pot luck with a “warning, it is pungent, don’t let that intimidate you, it tastes very different than it smells,” two people leave early when they hear the dessert course involves durian. Everyone else stays. Most try it, some hate it, some love it, and one guy says “I’m not sure I like this garlic aspect to it or not” as he helps himself to thirds.

I return with leftovers, but that’s fine because I get to eat all the rest. And each time I have a portion it just tastes better and better and there’s more pure pleasure involved. It’s as if I’m Edmund and durian is my Turkish delight. I’m not alone, either.

And now I read that chocolate (which I can’t eat) is in the same plant family and durian is suspected of having addictive properties (which probably accounts for its popularity throughout its native range; the customers are hooked) much like its more famous and less pungent New-World cousin. I don’t just “suspect,” I know.

Well, at least in contrast to heroin, it’s 100% legal, healthful at least in moderation, and not that easy to get here in the USA, so I won’t be pigging out and gaining weight too badly.