Almost Normal
Tippets by Taps #161: Science fiction, burnout, parenting, Faves and more. Enjoy!
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Greetings from Cape Cod where I’m currently on a family trip with my wife, kids, and my wife’s family.
On a trip. Words I couldn’t imagine typing just a few months ago. Yet here we are, on the other side of the country, a whole host of firsts crossed off the list. First time on a plane after COVID. First flight since November 2019. First trip as a family of four. For me, the clearest sign that we are close to being back to “normal”.
There are obvious signs we’re not all the way back. My game of “I wonder if I know anyone else at the airport” was understandably not as exciting given the sea of masks and tired eyes as everyone navigated their way through the new airport protocols. Small talk with strangers was largely limited to a coffee order and asking where the napkins were now kept. Ironically, the sole connection with a set of strangers we made was thanks to the only unmasked travelers at the airport: the babies. Masks kept on during the entirety of the flight with the smallest number of bathroom breaks I have ever seen.
But man, are we close.
Hugging my sister-in-law for the first time in two years says that we’re close. Meeting my nephew for the first time ever says that we’re close. Being on a beach to feel the summer’s heat, hearing the giggles of toddler cousins playing, sitting down to a clambake for 10 says that we’re close.
My heart is full. I am grateful. And I hope you have a joyous week ahead.
Other Tippets from Around the Web
We Are Living in a Science Fiction Novel
Science fiction has never been a staple in my content diet. I was never drawn in by Asimov or Orwell. The friendship between Captain Picard and Spock never one I wanted to learn more about. I have still never watched Star Wars. In my defense, my folks were never really into sci-fi, and growing up in Indonesia the Fast and Furious franchise was a bigger deal than Star Wars. And before you ask, yes, I have tried watching all the Jedi movies as an adult. I just can’t get past the quality of the graphics and am without the nostalgia factor required to sit through them.
All that said, I have actively made science fiction an increased part of what I read and watch over the last few years. Why? As Tyler Cowan put it in a recent Bloomberg article, “we are living in a science fiction novel.”
Now, for the first time in my life, I feel like I am living in a science fiction serial.
The break point was China’s landing of an exploratory vehicle on Mars. It’s not just the mere fact of it, as China was one of the world’s poorest countries until relatively recently. It’s that the vehicle contains a remarkable assemblage of software and artificial intelligence devices, not to mention lasers and ground-penetrating radar.
There is a series of science fiction novels about China in which it colonizes Mars. Published between 1988 and 1999, David Wingrove’s Chung Kuo series is set 200 years in the future. It describes a corrupt and repressive China that rules the world and enforces rigid racial hierarchies…The book is judged unrealistic and objectionable because its “vision of a Chinese-dominated future seems arbitrary, ungrounded in historical process.”
For a clarifying view of current reality, science fiction provides a window. And I haven’t even gotten to the pandemic, the miracle vaccines, or the UFO reports.
P.S. Please send me science fiction recommendations!
Burnout: Modern Affliction or Human Condition?
Everyone I speak to is feeling some level of burned out. Exhausted. Unmotivated. Lacking motivation. It makes sense. The impact of COVID is still being felt, the pain of loss not yet fully address, and while the world is starting to open up and there is building excitement about hot vaxx summer, we are by no means through to the other side. This piece by Jill Lepore investigates a burning question (pun intended): is everyone just burned out (and thus it’s just a part of this thing called life) or has something changed?
To question burnout isn’t to deny the scale of suffering, or the many ravages of the pandemic: despair, bitterness, fatigue, boredom, loneliness, alienation, and grief—especially grief. To question burnout is to wonder what meaning so baggy an idea can possibly hold, and whether it can really help anyone shoulder hardship. Burnout is a metaphor disguised as a diagnosis. It suffers from two confusions: the particular with the general, and the clinical with the vernacular. If burnout is universal and eternal, it’s meaningless. If everyone is burned out, and always has been, burnout is just . . . the hell of life. But if burnout is a problem of fairly recent vintage—if it began when it was named, in the early nineteen-seventies—then it raises a historical question. What started it?
I’ve just sent my daughter to nursery school. Have I lost her forever?
I’m a lucky dad to a beautiful 2.5-year-old son and a 5-month-old daughter. This piece in The Economist very much hit home as it smacked me in the face with an important lesson that I, despite considering myself to be a fairly intelligent and capable person, keep needing to relearn: The whole project of being a parent is a long, controlled process of letting go.
I hadn’t considered how strange it would feel pushing an empty buggy home. A friend remarked to me that this was only the first in a long series of departures. Until that morning my daughter’s entire world had been contained within her family. Everything she did was witnessed by one or both of her parents. As soon as she walked into the school, part of her life would be unwitnessed by us and, in some sense, become entirely hers. It struck me that this was also the definition of parenthood. The whole project of being a parent is a long, controlled process of letting go.
Me on my way to annoy my sister cause I’m bored
This video perfectly captures at least 50% of my relationship with my sister. I was in stitches watching it, and admit to having watched it more than a few times.
New Product to Try: Faves
I’ve been playing with a new app called Faves over the last month. It’s described by its founder, Tyler Maloney, kind of like if Twitter and TikTok had a baby. Users share content and can engage in asynchronous dialogue (whether audio or text-based) with the broader community. I like it because it seems like a truer and more curated ‘newsfeed’, with interesting articles from sources I’ve not previously come across (a number of the articles that have made their way into the last few Tippets issues have come from it). I’ve also been impressed by the team’s ability to push new features quickly. If you’re interested in trying out a new app, sign up here!
n.b. This is not a paid promotion nor do I have a financial interest in the Faves. Very much a pure “I think this is a cool product and you should try it!”
Quote I’m thinking about: "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust
If you have feedback on anything mentioned above or have interesting links/papers/books that you think would be worth sharing in future issues of Tippets, please reach out! Click here, reply to this email, or DM me on Twitter at @taps.
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