A Gentleman in Moscow: a very short review

So it came to be that Amor Towles's A Gentleman in Moscow was sitting on my bedside table, and of course I read it.

What a surprise this book is; what an unexpected experience it is to read A Gentleman in Moscow in 2018!

In all the shrill discord of recent times, it's as though you came home, collapsed onto the couch, picked up the (electronic, nowadays) newspaper, and, instead of reading one vehement and bitter article after another about wars, ecological calamities, and disputes over taxes, religion, and culture, you instead found yourself peacefully at home with something that might have been written by Jane Austen or Henry James.

But, more striking still, as you work your way through A Gentleman in Moscow, what you realize is that this elegant story, full of grace, dignity, and charm, is told against a backdrop as tumultuous, dramatic, and violent as any we are currently experiencing: the Russian Revolution and the creation of the USSR that started in 1917 and continued through the early 1920's.

I'm sure you know the broad strokes of this overall story, whether you learned it in high school, or made your way through Ten Days that Shook the World, or Doctor Zhivago, or Reds.

But you never saw those events from this perspective, I can assure you!

A Gentleman in Moscow tells the story of Count Alexander Rostov, a Russian aristocrat ("recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt ... born in St. Petersburg, 24 October 1889") from Nizhny Novgorod, who finds himself tried and found guilty by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, and is thereby declared a Former Person:

In Russian language and culture, "former people" (Russian: Бывшие люди) are people who lost their social status, an expression somewhat similar to the English one, "has-beens". The expression went into a wide circulation in the Russian Empire after the 1897 short story of Maxim Gorky, Бывшие люди, translated in English as Creatures That Once Were Men, about people fallen from prosperity into an abyss of misery. After the October Revolution the expression referred to people who lost their social status after the revolution: aristocracy, imperial military, bureaucracy, clergy, etc.

In the particular case of Count Rostov, he finds himself sentenced to a sort of eternal confinement to his quarters in the Metropol Hotel.

That may not sound like a promising tableau on which to write a 500 page epic of a novel, but Towles rises to the task, and then above it. A Gentleman in Moscow is full of adventure, romance, heartbreak, mystery, drama, and everything you could possibly want, all of it told in the most elegant and refined manner possible.

As we go, we find ourselves, ever so gently, understanding how it is that Things Change:

Not long ago, the Count recalled, there had been three seamstresses at work in this room, each before an American-made sewing machine. Like the three Fates, together they had spun and measured and cut -- taking in gowns, raising hems, and letting out pants with all of the fateful implications of their predecessors. In the aftermath of the Revolution, all three had been discharged; the silenced sewing machines had, presumably, become the property of the People; and the room? It had been idled like Fatima's flower shop. For those had not been years for the taking in of gowns or the raising of hems any more than they had been for the throwing of bouquets or the sporting of boutonnieres.

Then in 1921, confronted with a backlog of fraying sheets, tattered curtains, and torn napkins -- which no one had any intention of replacing -- the hotel had promoted Marina, and once again a trustworthy seam was being sewn within the walls of the hotel.

"Ah, Marina," said the Count when she opened the door with needle and thread in hand. "How good to find you stitching away in the stitching room."

Marina looked at the Count with a touch of suspicion.

"What else would I be doing?"

"Quite so," said the Count.

Along the way, we have plenty of the Essays of Montaigne, plenty of Casablanca, plenty of fine wine, plenty of Mayakovsky, and plenty of Dzerzhinsky Street.

It's all marvelous, beautiful, heart-felt, and grand: I guarantee you this is far and away the most fun you will ever have reading about a man in a hotel.

Up, up, and away

Well, this is not the sort of news you want to see when you return to work after a long weekend: New Crack in San Francisco's Tilting Millennium Tower:

Residents started hearing creaking sounds followed by a loud popping noise at 2:30 a.m. Saturday. Soon afterward, one owner found the crack in his window in a 36th floor unit in the north western corner of the 58-story high-rise.

And that's definitely not the picture of your own office building that you want to see, through the broken window of the tilting skyscraper.

Hmmm...

Meanwhile, in other news ... did I mention that the new bus terminal is open?

• A Grand New Space for the San Francisco Bay Area

  Behind the curvature of a pearlescent lace-like awning, this brand new multi-story San Francisco landmark transforms a commuter hub into an urban destination. With interiors open to the light, it’s a sociable, open space for people to gather, topped by a leafy park where the sky is the roof.

• Another Landmark in Benioff’s Blue: the Salesforce Transit Center in San Fransisco opens its doors!

  San Francisco Mayor London Breed said: “Our city is growing with both jobs and people, and we need to do a better job of moving everyone around this region, and this transit center will do just that. The transit center goes far beyond a transportation hub. It’s a thriving place of economic opportunity,”

• If You Build It, Will They Sponsor?

  It has long been the status quo in the U.S. for nonprofit and public institutions to depend on private largesse, from Carnegie libraries to museum wings named for various philanthropists. Corporate naming rights are a slightly more recent phenomenon but have thrived in an era of record corporate profits, unparalleled personal wealth, and public-sector retrenchment.

• Salesforce Park - Salesforce Transit Center

  Seventy feet above the Grand Hall, the Park runs the entire length of the Transit Center’s nearly four-block stretch. Home to 600 trees and 16,000 plants arranged in 13 different botanical feature areas, the newest public park in the San Francisco Bay Area is for the benefit and enjoyment of all...and there’s nothing else like it anywhere.

I confess to a certain amount of bias, but: the park is really nice.

My colleague, a passionate runner, told me that he's changed his routine to start coming in a bit earlier for a morning run around the park, early early, when it's not busy.

Normally, he runs along the city waterfront, with a view across toward Alcratraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge.

So it's a definite statement that he enjoys running in the park.

And, man oh man, that bus fountain is awesome!

Just in time for September and October, the nicest two months of the year in the city.

Now, please: just fix the tilting tower already!

Backpacking 2018: Marble Mountains Wilderness, Cliff Lake

It was time to go, so we packed up and went.

The Marble Mountains Wilderness is in far, far northern California.

If you get to Oregon, well, you just missed it; turn around, and go back 20 miles.

This is old wilderness; it was one of the first "primitive areas" established by the 1929 Forest Service L-20 regulations:

The L-20 Regulation provided a policy to designate Natural Areas, for scientific and educational purposes; Experimental Forests and Ranges, for long-term research unfettered by other management objectives; and Primitive Areas "to maintain primitive conditions of transportation, subsistence, habitation, and environment to the fullest degree compatible with their highest public use."

Well, really, that's not what made it old wilderness.

But, at least, it's what helped us understand that, in fact, it is Old Wilderness.

To get to the Marbles, from the south, you Head North.

If you get to Oregon, you've gone (just a little) too far.

Anyway, did I say? It was time to go, so we packed up and went.

The most natural way into the Marble Mountains is from the Scott Valley, and so that's what we did. We rested overnight in Yreka, partially acclimatizing ourselves to the higher elevations, then out we went, past Fort Jones, through Greenview, and then up. Up. Up!

Before you know it, you're in the wilderness.

Our hike was, essentially, the one described here: Cliff Lake in the Marble Wilderness – July 2010

Things we did:

• Climbed up to the intersection with the Pacific Crest Trail to see Shackleford Canyon from above, as well as to catch a glimpse of White Marble Mountain to the west
• Swam in lakes
• Tried out various new gear (tents, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, chairs, etc.) -- even a camp boat!
• Enjoyed the near-perfect weather (clear skies, no rain, mid-day highs in the high 70's, overnight lows in the high 40's)

Things we saw:

• Smoke
• Cows!
• Bats eating bugs
• A California Vole
• Beautiful Shackleford Creek
• A cowboy, on a horse, leading a saddled pony, accompanied by a herding dog
• A brilliant full moon
• Lots of fish
• A dense and healthy incense cedar and mountain hemlock forest in the canyon; burned trees on the other side of the Pacific Crest

Things we heard:

• Two owls
• Cowbells
• No airplanes or cars or trains

It was a very good trip.

There can be no doubt that I am extremely fortunate

I was talking to one of my colleagues, and happened to learn that he had just lost his mother.

This is now the 4th or 5th such colleague who's had this experience, in the last year or so, so I'm coming to hear this more and more often.

I don't think I know any colleagues my age (I'm 57, after all) who still have both their parents.

There can be no doubt that I am extremely fortunate.

All The Light We Cannot See: a very short review

I was standing in the ferry line, reading Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, when a man I (casually) know asked me: "What do you think of that book?"

"Phenomenal! Amazing! Stupendous!" I replied.

He sniffed, and allowed as to how he was disappointed: "I guess, after all the things everyone was saying, I just expected something more."

No doubt! You have high, High, HIGH expectations when you embark upon All The Light We Cannot See, a book which won the Pulitzer Prize, and many other prizes, and was short-listed for every prize it didn't win, and which made everybody's 10 books of the year list, and which spent a remarkable 3 YEARS on the New York Times best-seller list.

Yes. It's that book.

Arriving, roughly, on the 70th anniversary of D-Day, All The Light We Cannot See is a work of historical fiction set during World War II, and follows two simply remarkable and endlessly fascinating protagonists: Marie-Laure, a blind French girl, and Werner, an orphan German boy.

What genius this is!

Suddenly, simply, and certainly, "through the eyes of a child," we have shifted from Just Another World War II Novel to something different, something special.

Doerr develops this difference, this perspective, this new vision, with a variety of simple, yet effective, techniques.

The story unfolds as a series of short chapters, sometimes as short as a few paragraphs, alternating between each story, occasionally diverting to relate the stories of a few other crucial characters, but generally just letting us experience events as Marie-Laure and Werner did.

And the story-telling is not simply chronological; it moves forward, then backward, dropping in and out of their lives as they, and the world, change.

These are well-trodden paths, and well-known approaches, to telling this story. No new literary techniques are revealed here.

And, yes, I know: you've heard this story before.

But Doerr's touch is so careful, so authentic, so pure, that you are transported, perhaps even mesmerized.

Partly, it is due to Doerr's open heart. Here he is, trying to help us understand what it is to be blind:

To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer, an older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air. Marie-Laure can sit in an attic high aobve the street and hear lilies rustling in marshes two miles away. She hears Americans scurry acros farm fields, directing their huge cannons at the smoke of Saint-Malo; she hears families sniffling around hurricane lamps in cellars; she hears the tamarinds shiver and the jays shriek and the dune grass burn; she feels the great granite fist, sunk deep into the earth's crust, on which Saint-Malo sits, and the oacean teething at it from all four sides, and the outer islands holding steady against the swirling tides; she hears cows drink from stone troughs and dolphins rise through the green water of the Channel; she hears the bones of dead whales stir five leagues below, their marrow offering a century of food for cities of creatures who will live their whole lives and never once see a photon sent from the sun. She hears her snails in the grotto drag their bodies over the rocks.

And here, in a gripping depiction of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of a World War I veteran:

Now Etienne hyperventilates. At thirty-four minutes by his wrist-watch, he puts on his shoes and a hat that belonged to his father. Stands in the foyer summoning all his resolve. When he last went out, almost twenty-four years ago, he tried to make eye contact, to present what might be considered a normal appearance. But the attacks were sly, unpredictable, devastating; they sneaked up on him like bandits. First a terrible ominousness would fill the air. Then any light, even through closed eyelids, became excruciatingly bright. He could not walk for the thundering of his own feet. Little eyeballs blinked at him from the cobblestones. Corpses stirred in the shadows. When Madame Manec would help him home, he'd crawl into the darkest corner of his bed and belt pillows around his ears. All his energy would go into ignoring the pounding of his own pulse.

And here, the life of orphan siblings in pre-war Germany:

Werner and Jutta sift through glistening piles of black dust; they clamber up mountains of rusting machines. They tear berries out of brambles and dandelions out of fields. Sometimes they manage to find potato peels or carrot greens in trash bins; other afternoons they collect paper to draw on, or old toothpaste tubes from which the last dregs can be squeezed out and dried into chalk. Once in a while Werner tows Jutta as far as the entrance to Pit Nine, the largest of the mines, wrapped in noise, lit like the pilot at the center of a gas furnace, a five-story coal elevator crouched over it, cables swinging, hammers banging, men shouting, an entire mapful of pleated and corrugated industry stretching into the distance on all sides, and they watch the coal cars trundling up from the earth and the miners spilling out of warehouses with their lunch pails toward the mouth of the elevator like insects toward a lighted trap.

Although Marie-Laure is surely the more memorable and more-easily-loved of the two, my heart was wonderfully drawn to Werner, particularly the description of how he found his love for radios, and his talent for understanding how they work:

what he loves most is building things, working with his hands, connecting his fingers to the engine of his mind. Werner repairs a neighbor's sewing machine, the Children's House grandfather clock. He builds a pulley system to wind laundry from the sunshine back indoors, and a simple alarm made from a battery, a bell, and wire so that Frau Elena will know if a toddler has wandered outside. He invents a machine to slice carrots: lift a lever, nineteen blades drop, and the carrot falls apart into twenty neat cylinders.

One day a neighbor's wireless goes out, and Frau Elena suggests Werner have a look. He unscrews the back plate, waggles the tubes back and forth. One is not seated properly, and he fits it back into its groove. The radio comes back to life, and the neighbor shrieks with delight. Before long, people are stopping by Children's House every week to ask for the radio repairman. When they see thirteen-year-old Werner come down from the attic, rubbing his eyes, shocks of white hair sticking up off his head, homemade toolbox hanging from his fist, they start at him with the same skeptical smirk.

The older sets are the easiest to fix: simpler circuitry, uniform tubes. Maybe it's wax dripping from the conenser or charcoal built up on a resistor. Even in the newest sets, Werner can usually puzzle out a solution. He dismantles the machine, starts into it circuits, lets his fingers trace the journeys of electrons. Power source, triode, resistor, coil. Loudspeaker. His mind shapes itself around the problem, disorder becomes order, the obstacle reveals itself, and before long the radio is fixed.

I could go on forever.

But, better, you can discover this treasure of a book yourself, or let it discover you when it is ready.

Oh, by the way:

• There's a cursed diamond,
• and a complex metaphor involving Captain Nemo,
• and the most practical and sensible housekeeper ever born,
• and a (literally) cancerous super-villain,
• and John James Audobon's Birds of America,
• and Clair de Lune.

And more. Oh, so, so much more.

You will surely be disappointed, after everything everyone has said.

But: you will sit; you will sigh; you will look at a snail on the wall.

And nothing will ever be the same again.

Fair Shot: a very short review

Chris Hughes has had a very unusual life: prep school and Ivy League educated, he happened to be Mark Zuckerberg's roommate at college and found himself a co-founder of Facebook. Before long, he was retired and trying to figure out what to do with his life.

To his credit, he actually gave this some thought, and tells his story in a short memoir/policy proposal called Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn.

Over the last decade, he's tried various things: becoming involved in politics during the Obama campaign; buying and running a political magazine; getting involved with various charities; eventually making a trip to Africa to try to understand how various non-profits were trying to improve the lives of African villagers.

After all of this, he learns about the ideas that have been bouncing around about "Universal Basic Income," and comes to believe this is a viable and useful approach, so he has written Fair Shot to describe the ideas in more detail.

He calls his effort the Economic Security Project; you can read more about it.

Universal Basic Income is getting a fair amount of press these days; it's an interesting idea.

And it's certainly a more useful thing to talk about than some of the other things that seem to be dominating conversations nowadays. Fair Shot didn't change my mind one way or the other, but I found it an interesting book to read.

None of this is good

Ouch. I don't exactly know what sort of celestial alignment caused me to run across these essays more-or-less simultaneously.

Feel free to turn the page now.

Or maybe not?

I don't know. I don't know what to think.

If you're still here, then here we go: from distasteful to ugly to horrific, without much of a pause I'm afraid:

• The Political Education of Silicon Valley

  The founders they surveyed were less likely than even Democrats to embrace the core expression of the libertarian worldview—that government should provide military and police protection and otherwise leave people alone to enrich themselves. They expressed overwhelming support for higher taxes on the wealthy and for universal health care. But in other ways they deviated from progressive orthodoxy. They were far more likely to emphasize the positive impact of entrepreneurial activity than progressives and had dim views of government regulation and labor unions that were closer to that of your average Republican donor than Democratic partisan.

  If you plot those values on the matrix of conventional US politics, there appears to be a contradiction: The tech elite want an activist government, but they don’t want the government actively restricting them.

• Uber Is Not Serious About Changing Its Toxic Culture

  The open board-chair position was a prime opportunity to lead by example and to appoint someone who embodies the idea of strength through diversity and empathy. Instead, they appointed the former CEO of Northrop Grumman—a position that requires, more than anything else, the ability to be OK with making billions of dollars even as your products maim and kill hundreds of thousands of people around the world. That’s not the kind of skill Uber needs right now.

• In Oakland, Nia Wilson’s Death Could Never Feel “Random”

  Every killing has its own idiosyncratic story. But when a society fails to respond in any systematic way to a pattern of black death, compensatory mechanisms will emerge. There are trends at work that black communities can see and that white America refuses to recognize—painful, documented contexts whose awful contours are too familiar and well substantiated to dismiss as simple paranoia.

• This is what the life of an incel looks like

  Feminism and leftist political discourse had made all masculinity toxic, Joey said. “Ask a feminist what is one positive masculine trait? Any example of positive masculinity?” he said. “Traditionally it would be courage, honor. But no one wants to say that because they believe that implies that women can't be courageous or honorable.” He claimed media outlets like Vice are pushing “degeneracy” and demeaning masculinity. "You guys have males who look like me though, you know? You guys don't have masculine men, I don't think, on Vice.” As Joey pulled me further into the world of incels, it became clear this brand of misogyny was a circular expression of self-hatred: I am weak, like a woman. Women have made me weak.

• What Happened When I Tried Talking to Twitter Abusers

  Women – both online and off – are told that we are overreacting, that we brought this abuse upon ourselves, that we can just leave the platform or get a new job, that the threats aren’t real, and a litany of other arguments meant to cause us to question our own realities and experiences. Teach a woman that she can’t trust herself and she becomes infinitely easier to abuse. Those of us who do speak up are labeled difficult, humorless, shrill, caustic; not only are women mistreated, but a system is in place to ensure that they can’t call out that abuse without doing more damage to themselves.

It's bad. It's really bad. I'm not sure how it got this bad this fast, but boy is it bad.

Broken Harbor: a very short review

The fourth volume of Tana French's brilliant Dublin Murder Squad series is Broken Harbor.

By this point, French has established a bit of a pattern, and Broken Harbor definitely fits it: a troubled detective, a troubling and complex investigation, a young partner with their own challenges, and a litany of fascinating other characters who wander in and out.

And through it all, French's amazing, almost effortless control of description, dialogue, and pace:

She had her hands wrapped around the mug again, tilting it in circles and watching the tea swirl. The smell of it was doing its job, making this alien place feel homey and safe. "Actually, it probably stopped working a long time before that. You can see it in the photos: we stop being jigsawed together like in that one there, instead we're just these elbows and knees stuck out at each other, all awkward ... We just didn't want to see it. Pat especially. The less it worked, the harder he tried. We'd be sitting on the pier or somewhere, and Pat'd be spread out till he was practically stretching, trying to keep close to all of us, make it feel like one big gang again."

With French, an ordinary paragraph from an interrogation room has it all: alliteration ("had her hands", "all awkward"), rhyme ("pier or somewhere"), sensory imagery (the touch of the mug, the taste and smell of the tea, the pictures), metaphor (the interrogation swirls like the tea in the cup), and the turn of phrase ("this alien place", "jigsawed ... elbows and knees").

Strikingly to me, with Broken Harbor French is more explicitly topical than in her previous books, dealing directly and bluntly with the consequences of the real estate collapse of 2008 and its consequences for Ireland. Broken Harbor was written in 2013, a time when I happened to be traveling in Ireland (though not in Dublin), and I saw for myself how dreadful it was.

I think French perhaps overtops it a bit with her plot: elements of it strain credibility to the limit. But, as is a recurring theme for her, Broken Harbor is deeply concerned with issues of mental health, and there can be no doubt that the Great Recession of 2008 dealt a several mental health blow to everyone who came into contact with it, even in the slightest of ways.

So I'll grant her a bit of dispensation on the farthest of the plot stretches, and content myself with another fine work of art.

How Not To Be Wrong: a very short review

I'm a sucker for popular mathematics books.

Especially good ones.

Jordan Ellenberg's How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking is a good popular mathematics book.

Although the book is wide-ranging, with many interesting topics, two particularly stand out to me.

The first is the strong treatment of the notion of "statistically significant." Ellenberg explores this notion in a number of ways, looking at ways in which it is used (correctly and incorrectly), what it means to say something is statistically significant, rigorously, and even looks at the historical background of statistical significance, tracing it back to John Arbuthnot in the late 17th century.

The second, much more entertaining if maybe not as practically useful, is Ellenberg's detailed and fascinating exploration of modern state lotteries, and how they fail. In particular, he looks at the flawed Cash WinFall lottery that was held in Massachusetts in the early 2000's, and how various parties (university students, actuaries, lottery hobbyists, etc.) found errors in the lottery rules that enabled players to profit from the lottery if they did things just right. The mathematical underpinnings here involve the notion of "expected value," and Ellenberg's treatment is extremely interesting.

If you like popular mathematics, you'll enjoy How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

There is no need for you to replicate this experiment...

... but I can report to you that,

• if you have a Mac (in my case, running 10.13.6 "High Sierra")
• and you happen to write some buggy software
• which very very very rapidly fills up your entire hard disk
• and, I mean, FILLS, to the point where it is totally 100% full
• then even though your terminal windows are still open, and the program has died, and you know where all those files are, if you try to remove the files you get rm: no space left on device
• even if you run the command as root

This might throw you for a loop. Your disk is full, nothing works, and you can't even remove any of the files!

It might even be scary, and you might not be able to decide what you ought to do.

Well, just hard power-cycle the machine, so that it goes through a full system restart.

Something during the system restart process manages to release JUST ENOUGH of the allocated disk space, somehow, so that after the reboot you are able to remove those files.

And you can continue to use your computer.

Where we come from

This is beautiful, as well as illuminating: 200 Years of U.S. Immigration Looks Like the Rings of a Tree

Like countries, trees can be hundreds, even thousands, of years old. Cells grow slowly, and the pattern of growth influences the shape of the trunk. Just as these cells leave an informational mark in the tree, so too do incoming immigrants contribute to the country’s shape.

These immigration “rings” expand during years when certain welcoming factors are prevalent, such as when American immigration policies become less restrictive and its economy offers greater opportunity. The “rings” tend to stay slim during years of war or economic upheaval.

Click the link for the beautiful infographic.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Telex From Cuba: two very short reviews

It's been six weeks now since I raced through Junot Diaz's vivid barely-fictionalized fever-dream of his childhood, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

And all these recent weeks, it's been sitting on my desk right in front of me, staring at me, challenging me to decide how I feel.

Why is this so hard? Well, of course, because of this, and this, and of course because of the bigger context in which those events reside.

About those big, hard, complicated topics, I have nothing new or interesting to say.

But that doesn't mean I don't think they are tremendously important.

And, meanwhile, there, on the shelf, sits Oscar Wao. And, so, how am I to feel?

As a book, as a work of art, as an accomplishment, Oscar Wao is everything everyone has said about it over the last decade: it's powerful, it's compelling, it's brilliantly-executed. It sears its way into your brain.

But clearly it stands differently in the context of 2018 than it did in the context of 2008.

I'm overjoyed that I read it, it was lingering on my list for far too long.

But I don't know how rapidly I'll go seek out Diaz's other works. I'll have to think on that.

Meanwhile, Rachael Kushner is absolutely the writer of the moment, with her latest book being the only thing anyone could talk about this spring. With her substantial East Bay heritage, her books had been on my radar for a while, but I hadn't, somehow, made a start. I decided to start at the beginning, with Telex from Cuba: A Novel.

It's so easy to see Oscar Wao and Telex From Cuba through the same prism, given that they are both fictionalized depictions of what it was like to be a child in a poor Caribbean country in the mid-20th century, whether that be Dominican Republic under Trujillo or Cuba under Batista.

And these are both superbly-crafted books.

Telex From Cuba, though it won many fewer awards (was it unjustly penalized by arriving just a few months after Diaz's wonder-work had swept the world away?), is, I think, the stronger work, and may find a more enduring audience.

It is more delicate, more subtle, more patient. Where Oscar Wao shakes you by the shoulders and says: "Wake up! Pay attention! This is important!", Telex crawls slowly into your consciousness, bit by bit.

And Telex From Cuba doesn't dilute its focus by jumping back and forth between the Caribbean experience and the Caribbean immigrant experience, as Oscar Wao does.

Is it more problematic, less "authentic", that Kushner is Anglo and American (it was her mother that was the Everly Lederer character in Telex, recalling her experiences as a child of an American manager of the United Fruit Company in Cuba), whereas Diaz is Dominican through and through? Perhaps.

If you want to, and can, read both books.

If, for whatever reason, you can only read one, read Telex From Cuba.

Complexities of modern world noted

Today: Nonprofit for Migrants Declines a Donation from Salesforce

On Monday, Ryan asked Salesforce to cancel its CBP contract. On Tuesday, the company told RAICES that it would not cancel the contract but understood the group’s position.

In his email, Ryan called Salesforce’s response to employee concerns a deflection. “When it comes to supporting oppressive, inhumane, and illegal policies, we want to be clear: the only right action is to stop,” he wrote. “The software and technical services you provide to CBP form part of the foundation that helps ICE operate efficiently, from recruiting more officers to managing vendors. While you justified continuing your contract with CBP by claiming that Salesforce software ‘isn’t working with CBP regarding the separation of families at the border,’ this is not enough.”

Also today: Zuckerberg Looks To 'Clear Up' Stance On Facebook, Fake News And The Holocaust

"I'm Jewish, and there's a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened," he said.

"I find that deeply offensive," Zuckerberg continued. "But at the end of the day, I don't believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don't think that they're intentionally getting it wrong, but I think ..."

Swisher interrupted to say, "In the case of the Holocaust deniers, they might be, but go ahead."

Seeming to view the question as primarily one of free speech, the Facebook founder said, "I just don't think that it is the right thing to say, 'We're going to take someone off the platform if they get things wrong, even multiple times.' " Zuckerberg said that rather than taking down a fake news or conspiracy post or barring the user, the company would seek to minimize it.

...

"Our goal with fake news is not to prevent anyone from saying something untrue — but to stop fake news and misinformation spreading across our services," Zuckerberg said. "If something is spreading and is rated false by fact checkers, it would lose the vast majority of its distribution in News Feed."

One year ago: The Moral Voice of Corporate America

for the most part, companies got political only under duress. Rarely have chief executives gone looking for a controversy. Instead, the prevailing view was one articulated by the economist Milton Friedman in The New York Times in 1970: “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”

By the 1990s, some corporate actors began taking the initiative. Apple, Disney and Xerox extended health care benefits to partners of gay and lesbian employees, helping to pave the way for broader acceptance of gay rights. Still, promoting inclusion and advancing diversity were hardly part of the curriculum for emerging titans of industry.

“When I went to business school, you didn’t see anything like this,” said Marc Benioff, the founder and chief executive of Salesforce. “Nobody talked about taking a stand or adopting a cause.”

Now, Mr. Benioff is at the vanguard of a group of executives who are more connected — to customers, employees, investors and other business leaders — than ever before

Connected, ..., and experiencing that connection.

Up, up, and away!

Apparently it's still Seattle:

• Seattle tops the nation in tower cranes for third straight year as construction reaches new peak

  new projects have broken ground while the number of developments that finished has been abnormally low, according to development data tracked by the Downtown Seattle Association.

  The area’s suburbs weren’t covered in the report, but officials in Bellevue reported 14 cranes, twice as many as its high point in 2017, as its downtown springs up with new skyscrapers and the burgeoning Spring District rises around a new light-rail station. Bellevue actually has more cranes than Boston, Phoenix or Honolulu.

  Doug Demers, managing principal of B+H Architects in Seattle, said he expects the jackhammering and concrete pouring to continue. He sees projects at their early stages, and the pipeline remains large, despite land and labor getting more expensive.

Interestingly, we were just in Seattle two weeks ago, and it didn't seem as crazy as I thought it was going to be.

But we didn't go anywhere close to South Lake Union.

Heck, I didn't even make it to The Spheres (my bad).

But I definitely noticed all the activity in Bellevue and Redmond, because we spent more time out in the Eastern 'burbs.

And our hosts noted that the nicest of those gorgeous new downtown condos are now well into the mid-7-figures.

Meanwhile, the chorus is growing, the observations are becoming sharper and clearer; just how much longer do we have? The End is Near For the Economic Boom

Frothy stocks, economic indicators pointing down, financial stability flashing red, trade war, and more—it’s a lot to worry about. It doesn’t necessarily mean calamity is just ahead. For all we know, stocks could resume rising or even “melt up,” as Grantham says. The economy may well grow impressively this year. But we don’t have to look much further out to get more nervous. No one except the Council of Economic Advisers seems to think GDP can grow at 3% over the long term, and if the recent stimulus turbocharges growth, it does so at a price that will have to be paid afterward. The economic cycle hasn’t been abolished; all evidence says we’re in the latter stages of one. And we had better be ready for the next recession, because when it arrives, economists will not have predicted it.

Sigh.

WC 2018 final

What an entertaining game! 90 minutes of action, never a dull moment. Some weird things, too: fans on the pitch, goal-keeper mistakes, own goals, video-replay penalty kick.

I cannot believe how hard that Croatian team played. Outmatched from the start, they never played like it. Falling behind, they never gave up. Right down the very last minute, every single step they gave more, worked harder, over-achieved and over-achieved.

But what an astonishingly great French team this was! I may go a long time before I see another team as strong and deep as this one.

Interestingly, I thought it all changed when Kante came off for N'Zonzi. Perhaps it was Kante's yellow card, perhaps he was tired, I suspect he was hurt. Whatever it was, N'Zonzi came on and then in the span of 10 minutes it was decided. Pogba's lovely goal, followed by an equally lovely effort from Mbappe.

Vive la France! Well-earned, and well-deserved, and a most entertaining end to a most entertaining World Cup.

The Talos Principle: a very short review

ICYMI, the mouse roared today, and defeated the mighty lion.

It was a joy to see my Croatian colleague as happy as I've seen him in quite some time.

Meanwhile, in other news Croat, I've been playing the lovely The Talos Principle, from the Croatian gaming studio Croteam.

I'm kind of a sucker for puzzle games.

But this is a very nice puzzle game. It's clever, clean, elegant, appealing to both the eye and ear (make sure you get the version with the nice soundtrack included), and entertaining.

As to the sci-fi part of it: well, I'm not sure how much I care about that frillery.

But it's a lovely puzzle game, and a great way to while away the hours.

WS 2018 Semifinals

We're getting down to it.

In many ways, trying to make picks isn't a lot of fun at this point. For one thing, the field contains only very strong teams, so no matter what happens, some great teams are going to lose out. For another thing, I rather like all these teams.

But, anyway:

1. Belgium vs France

   This match is the REAL final, I think: who prevails in this match will also win on Saturday. Belgium's attacking group (Hazard, De Bruyne, Lukaku, Fellaini, Chadli, Witsel) are certainly as good as any cup winner in decades, and Thibaut Courtois is the goalkeeper's goalkeeper.

   But, France measure up well everywhere. Even though Belgium must be feeling quite confident after the way they dispatched Brazil, France will be the hardest test by far. If Pogba and Kante play as well as they can, France can prevail. Vive la France! If you only watch one World Cup match, make it this one! It goes to extra time, but France are able to score the decisive goal in the 97th minute.

2. England vs Croatia

   I think that the reason that England are in the semifinals is because they have the youngest team (2nd youngest?) in the tournament. However, this is also the reason that England's tournament is about to end. Croatia showed their experience and maturity in defeating the hosts, and they will bring that same discipline and coordination and mettle to this match. The match will be long and exhausting (to watch, not only to play). By the end of the match, which will go to 120 minutes and end up with 10 vs 10 on the field, Croatia will, for the third consecutive game, prevail in the shootout, much to the dismay of the English fans who will instantly decide that the curse has returned (they should not, for this is a fine English squad and hopefully is the sign of many great things to come).

Oh, by the way, pay some attention to the referees for these matches, for you're seeing the best referees at the peak of their skill, and being a World Cup referee is a particularly interesting and unusual skill:

1. Cüneyt Çakır
2. Andrés Ismael Cunha Soca

I hope this means that Néstor Pitana will referee the final! (Or Björn Kuipers, too, he's great. Just not Mark Geiger.)

Up, up, and away!

If there's a slowdown, it hasn't arrived here yet:

• How Window Washers Almost Sunk Salesforce Tower’s Interactive Light Sculpture

  There’s a reason that most LED installations face the LEDs out—that’s easy, you just stick them on a surface. What Campbell proposed instead was really hard.

  “We had designed these rods sticking off the side of the building to hold the LED hats facing in,” Campbell says. And then “the window washers told us they would end up breaking some off every day. It took us six to 12 months to figure out what to do.”

  Campbell and his team first considered making the rods too strong to break, but realized that if they did that, a blow to a rod would end up bending the aluminum shell of the building, and that would be even worse.

• Oakland Office Development Plan Would Rival SF Salesforce Tower

  The Eastside project would take up the entire block bordered by Telegraph, Broadway, 21st and 22nd Streets, nearly 1.6 million square feet of office space.

  “You see a lot of parking spaces around Oakland that are being developed for housing and other things. I think people are looking at it and saying, ‘We’re this close to transit.’ Transit is an issue. We think about environmental issues. It’s an ideal place to build and could be a catalyst for Oakland in terms of bringing good quality jobs.”

  Hutson notes Oakland has gone on a housing building spree, with 4,000 units under construction right now and says the ripple effect is two-fold. People can live in Oakland and stay in the city to work, avoiding the arduous commute to Silicon Valley; or they could continue to live near BART stops across the East Bay and shorten their public transit commute by getting off in downtown Oakland.

  “Given the fact that there’s so little commercial space in the Bay Area, certainly in San Francisco, Silicon Valley and certainly looking at Oakland, I think it’s a logical gamble,” said Hutson.

• $1 Billion Alameda Point Construction Project Shifts Access

  the former Navy facilities and heavy industrial equipment are being torn down, while major infrastructure improvements are being built including new water, sewer, electrical and gas lines, newly paved streets with bike and transit lanes, and bulkhead improvements on Seaplane Lagoon for the new ferry terminal.

  The new mixed-use community will include apartments, townhomes, parks, and nearly 100,000 square feet of space for restaurants, retailers, makers, R&D, and office users.

• Why are there suddenly so many ships on San Francisco Bay?

  The longshoremen who load and unload cargo ships had July 4 and 5 off for Independence Day, creating a bit of a backup on moving freight.

  “We have five ships at berth this morning and five due,” Bernardo said. He added that many of the ships are oil tankers and fueling vessels not headed for the port.

  So if ship-spotting is your thing, this is a good time. And it turns out a spectacular cargo ship is due to enter the bay Monday. That’s when a 1,036-foot-long, cherry blossom magenta-colored container ship is set to arrive at the Port of Oakland from Long Beach. Named the ONE Competence, the ship is the newly branded symbol of Japan’s recently consolidated container shipping lines. The ship will depart Tuesday for Hong Kong.

  The color represents a cherry blossom tree, symbol of Japanese spring, the port said, adding that ONE plans to brand more of its 240 vessels with the vibrant hue. The ONE Competence can carry more than 8,000 20-foot containers.

WS 2018 Quarterfinals

Oh, here we are again! Time for those picks!

I seem to have done OK on my Round-of-16 picks, but that will not stand.

Partly, this is because my ambivalence is high, because, out of the 8 teams remaining, I now have to make some Very Hard Choices.

Enough whining: here we go:

1. Uruguay vs France.

   Oh, tragedy! My favorite two teams have to play each other! Uruguay, possessors of the greatest of World Cup history, and far-and-away the hardest working team in this World Cup, have to play France, my top pick. Drat! But, did I mention that France are my top pick? Sorry, Uruguay, France prevail 3-2 in a beauty of a game, reckoned by all as the best game of this World Cup.

2. Brazil vs Belgium.

   Again it happens! I wanted to see several more games from each of these exciting and entertaining teams. But it is not to be. Although Belgium give Brazil everything they can handle, the game is tied after 90 and Brazil score in the 107th minute to win 2-1.

3. Sweden vs England.

   Sweden are the "winning ugly" of this World Cup, but England's victory over Colombia is uglier than anything Sweden have come up with so far in this tournament. Will I watch? Of course I will, but I'll be shielding my eyes the entire way. England somehow win, 1-0, in regular time.

4. Russia vs Croatia.

   I knew Denmark would be a hard battle for Croatia, and frankly it's a wonder Croatia advanced. But advance they did, and are rewarded with the hosts. Russia have been batting WAY above their average in this tournament, and finally it catches up with them, as they face their complete equal in hard-nosed, disciplined play. This one is 0-0 after 90, 1-1 after 120, and Croatia move on after Kicks From The Spot

Ole!

Not rain

Around the middle of yesterday afternoon, the skies darkened.

The sunset was deep red, terrible and angry.

This morning we awoke to a coating of ash-fall all around.

It's that time of year again.