Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Get back to work

San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie has ordered city workers to return-to-office for four days per week. (Why not the full five?) The rationale is that more face-to-face interaction will increase productivity (not advocating, just writing what is stated in the article). More days in-office will boost spending in the downtown core.

This thread in the San Francisco subreddit is breathing in a huge amount of cope. Lots of advocation for the positives of working from home. Lots of admonition for the impending congestion and traffic increase. This one post hilariously says they are being forced to buy $20 lunches downtown when reporting for work in person. Who the French can afford to eat-out for lunch every single workday (non lawyer and tech-bro edition)? Pack your own lunch from home like an adult.

Anyways, this return-to-office order isn’t a referendum on the merits of working from home. (The are positives and negatives.) It’s a referendum on optics. San Francisco can’t plead with the private sector to refill the suffering downtown core - to boost the surrounding economy - when its own workers aren’t being asked to do the same. Employees paid for by the taxpayers should be first in line in helping whatever revitalization plan the city has.

There’s jealousy involved, too. Those who cannot work-from-home are envious of those who can. The problem that public service workers have is that they are beholden to voters. If enough people are angry at your privilege, someone like President Trump will win an election, then demand all Federal workers to return-to-office.

Heck, unionized public workers who’s already in-office full-time ought to make a complaint in the name of fairness. Why do others members of the union get to work-from-home, and you cannot? Shouldn’t all worker’s contract terms be the same?

Strategic egg reserve

In this current battle royale climate for eggs, the trick is to get to Costco (or your grocer of choice) soon as it opens in the morning. You will then be among the lucky few to snag from the limited stock for the day. At least Costco now limits three items of eggs per customer. Hoarders and re-sellers can go die a furiously fiery death.

I honestly don’t think there is a need to hoard an egg supply. I eat two eggs a day for the protein gains (some would say that’s not nearly enough per day), and I’ve yet to run out of my supply. That’s with resupplying only every few weeks (when I go to Costco). These pictures of customers filling up entire carts with eggs: how big of a fridge have they got? Unless there comes an avian flu strain that kills off chickens into extinction, I think we’ll be alright.

It reminds me of the toilet paper panic back at the beginning of the pandemic. Do people expect to wipe their ass more often when they are stuck indoors? The only thing hoarding toilet paper saves you from is having to make a trip when you run out. And even then, there’s always the shower…

What’s hilarious about the egg shortage is that it is coinciding with a new President that ran on a platform of lowering grocery prices (was never going to happen, obviously). January 2025 inflation numbers are unexpectedly high, too. Maybe what America needs is a strategic egg reserve, like the strategic oil reserve. President Trump can increase the egg supply to level out the price shocks.

Forget breakthrough medical research - the Trump administration certainly has by freezing NIH funding; what we need is to research a new method for storing eggs for years on end whilst preserving initial quality. I personally think that’s a great idea.

Can you DOGE this?

I am glad I finally got new tires on the M2, right before another pair of rain storms is due to hit the San Francisco Bay Area. Not that I will be doing any driving during that time. It’s just nice to know that in an emergency, I don’t have to treat the accelerator pedal with the smoothest of care. The original set of rear tires were truly at its end of life.

It’s been interesting to see Elon Musk’s DOGE running through Federal agencies looking for redundancies and waste. Legalities aside (I’m not a Constitutional lawyer so I’ve no idea whatsoever), any fiscal conservative worthy of the claim should welcome a culling of the largesse. (Please don’t forget the Pentagon, Elon!) Indeed, why should billions in taxpayer money still go to other countries, when the referendum for last year’s election is the ill economic feelings of Americans?

President Trump wishes to cull the actual number of Federal workers. He probably saw Elon getting rid of 80 percent of the Twitter workforce, and what is now known as X doesn’t seem to be worse for it. I’ll take some of that! DOGE probably can’t go that far with the Federal workforce, but there’s stuff to be cut for sure. The stereotype of the lazy public worker who does nothing but collect a paycheck (and protected by a union) is based on some reality, no? We all either know a person (raises hand), or know a person who knows a person.

With San Francisco facing a fiscal cliff, the new mayor might need to pull the layoff lever. Some in the San Francisco subreddit hilariously wrote the city can use a DOGE-like makeover. Surely our weathly scion of a mayor can ask some business tycoon friend of his to spearhead such endeavor.

Actually, an entity that we can all agree that needs to be way more efficient: the Department of Motor Vehicles. Elon is more than welcome to get his team of twenty something software engineers to hack into the DMV system.

Paper or plastic

One month into year 2025 and I hope I’ve gotten all the sickness out of the way. Earlier in January I had a bout with the common cold. Just now I am recovering from a stomach virus. That certainly should be it for this year in terms of illnesses. Please, I cannot handle any more away time from lifting weights. I can imaginarily see the gains melting away in front of my very eyes.

Due to the stomach virus, I was on a semi-liquid diet for about a day. Fruit smoothies to the rescue. The location on campus gave me a paper straw for it (thanks a lot, San Francisco). Predictably, the straw utterly disintegrated before I was even halfway done with the smoothie. Happy to save the environment by not being able to finish my drink! If we are serious about this paper straw business, someone has to invent a stronger solution for thicker dinks. (Shark Tank opportunity, I reckon.)

Coincidently, President Trump plans to sign an executive order overturning President Biden’s pledge to ban plastic straw usage in federal agencies. Those lucky bastards! The masses shouldn’t have to suffer with an inferior product in order to make some virtual-signaling environmentalist happy.

I agree plastic waste is a problem. But how do you propose a fruit smoothie be served without a sturdy straw? Sippy lids works for thin liquids, not milk-shake levels of consistency. Give customers a (compostable) spoon? Who wants to “drink” a smoothie with a spoon? You know what, perfect solution: ban smoothies altogether. No need to solve a problem if the problem doesn’t exist anymore.

Sorry, I’m cranky from being sick. Nothing will make you value health more than suffering through illness.

Let him cook

President Trump has enacted tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China. Begun, the trade wars have. For what reason, it’s not immediately clear. For the general public, the salient thing is prices will be going up. If you’re looking to buy a car this year, pray that it isn’t manufactured in Canada or Mexico! You really think automakers are going to eat that tariff costs entirely?

The best thing to do right now is to let Trump cook (as the kids say these days). Whatever he’s got planned, be it Project 2025 or whatever, let him execute. The good ideas will work, and the bad ideas won’t. You have to allow people to directly feel the consequences. Otherwise the lesson never gets learned. I wonder how Trump-voting Federal employees are dealing with the freezes and return-to-office mandate. Your vote, your consequences…

What’s disgusting to see is people appealing to Democrats to do something. First of all, it’s extremely pointless to badger the minority party. Secondly, the party that has been pilloried for their empathy (the path to DEI is paved with very good empathic intentions) can’t then be asked to utilize that same empathy to save you. It’s like the woman who rejects the nice guy but yet wants the supportive benefits the nice guy provides.

You cannot have it both ways. Democrats ought to turn off their empathy muscles for the time being. They should not let their tendency to want to limit harm be used to save the same people that rejected it. Like the nice guy that refuses to leave, at some point you’re just allowing yourself to be abused.

I’m for letting winning Presidents to implement their agenda. The market (read: U.S. population) will determine whether they are good or bad. High inflation knocked out Biden/Harris; if Trump - due to the tariffs - causes another high inflation period, the Republican Party will surely be in a precarious position in the next election cycle.

Like winning the lottery

In our current national crisis of severe egg shortage, finding a two-dozen pack at Costco feels like winning the lotto.

It’s as if god himself wants me to continue having a constant egg supply. There I was at my local Costco on Saturday afternoon. It seems I had just missed a resupply of eggs: I saw many a cart with them, but when I got to the fridge section, there were no eggs to be found. That is, until I saw at the corner a fully intact two-dozen carton stacked underneath a few cartons with broken eggs. Pure luck is what that was. My two eggs a day habit shall not be interrupted. For now…

For all the joke about President Trump lowering produce prices - I really don’t care! Just let there be eggs for me to buy! I can absorb high groceries prices because I’m only buying for the singular me. (straight to privilege jail, right away.)

Of course, high grocery prices during the Biden years contributed a lot to Trump’s second ascendancy. You can throw statistics about how wages have kept up (or outpaced) with inflation - it doesn’t matter. Higher produce prices feel like a penalty, while a wage increase feels like something you’ve earned. It’s not a good feeling to get a raise, only for that money to get wiped out by inflation. Typically, a wage increase should mean more disposable income.

President Trump seems determined to curtail illegal immigration and deport illegal immigrants already on U.S. soil. Many of whom work in farming. When you diminish the labor supply, cost of goods go up. When cost of goods go up, so do prices. I’m skeptical that Americans would tolerate another inflationary shock to their grocery bills. Then again, it’s not like Trump can run for office again. For now…

I'm just saying

It’s day three of President Trump’s second term, and egg prices have not gone down at all! In fact, there aren’t any to buy at my local Whole Foods. Because no matter who the President is, the annual avian flu rolls around like clockwork. Farmers have to kill the infected chickens, and therefore, decreased egg supply. I guess I’ll substitute that particular supply of protein with beef jerky for the time being.

Word on the street is President Trump signed an executive order to basically end telework for Federal employees. Sucks to the be the guy who works remotely for the Federal government, and voted for Trump. Though maybe he sees this a self-sacrifice for the betterment of the country. People on both sides of the spectrum can agree the government budget can do some trimming. Like Bernie Sanders, I suggest to start with the Department of Defense…

There are staff members at the university I work at that are still on a hybrid work schedule. COVID’s been over for at least two years now! And this isn’t the bitter me talking (I’ve been full-time onsite since middle of 2020). The nature of my work means I cannot be remote, so it is what it is. There’s no use comparing.

However, I think the university has to consider the downside of hybrid work. There’s less people on campus on any given day. (Fridays are practically ghost-town levels of personnel scarcity.) A vibrant student experiences starts with a vibrant campus. We are not getting the maximum when people can work from home. Anything student-facing should be 100 percent full-time on campus.

Vendors on campus are making less money, too.

People are saying the return-to-office order will cause a brain drain of Federal workers. Folks would rather quit than go back to a commute. Well, our university is facing a budget crisis…