Race Report

He's even better in the other direction

I wrote a couple of years ago about Felix's chosen sport, mountain bike racing. He has stuck with it and, I assume, is getting better with the years. Certainly his writing has improved, which is why it is a pleasure to bring to you his report on his most recent race. Enjoy!

RACE REPORT

Race #1 - Fort Ord - March 2nd, 2024

Felix Shuldiner

With the first race of the season came the first chance to race my new bike, a full suspension Orbea Oiz that is perfect for bumpy NICA courses. Except my frame was broken. With my hopes dashed I turned to plan B, which just so happened to be forgetting my helmet at home, buying Clif Bloks en route, borrowing the team hardtail, borrowing a team helmet, pre-riding too many laps too fast, and just generally forgetting what racing is all about.

I woke up in the morning to cloudy skies and no appetite, left my hotel probably an hour before Julian left his, and arrived back at the pit zone half as early as Julian was late. The morning was off to a great start: sausages and chocolate milk hit the spot, and I scarfed down the traditional nutella bagel. I was having a great time until I heard that Julian hadn’t left his hotel yet, and was racing in half an hour. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but this year I was a captain and Julian had three other racers with him. In the spirit of looking out for my riders I did my part to streamline their paths from Julian’s truck to the start gate, and breathed a sigh of relief as I watched Julian and Tyler fly by. The rest of my morning was spent trying to stomach banana bread and walking the course counting how many laps ahead of everyone Scout was. 

Before I knew it, it was my turn to start warming up and as usual I decided to skip the rollers in favor of some pit zone laps. By the time I crossed the start line my legs were cold, but I was fired up and ready to finally race after five hours of waiting. My race was off to a great start as I caught someone’s handlebar, catching my balance I continued my first sprint and before I knew it, I had found a group and we were flying into the first descent. I passed more riders on the fast flat sections, and didn’t stop passing until I found myself alone during the second of my four laps. My second lap was the real beginning of the race for me, I was warmed up and was about to run into one of the smartest and most annoying riders I have ever raced against. Encouraged by my teammates in the feed zone, I pressed on the gas and started to catch up to Evan. I found him being trailed by a Tam rider, and together Evan and I shook him off over the course of half a lap. Feeling fast, I powered ahead trying to put as much distance between the drafting Tam rider and me as possible. All was going well until, just like every other race it seems, my chain popped off. Evan and the Tam rider whizz past me, struggling to get the chain back on and get my speed back, and Timberwolf flew past me as well. 

My mechanical lost me time, but also gave me a short break and a little of my energy back, and during my third lap I was able to catch the Tam rider again, only to discover why Evan had seemed so angry at him just one lap ago: the Tam rider was so smart about racing that his tactics bordered on unsportsmanship. “Man I’m so cooked, you should pass me I’m just costing you time” he would say, and I would pass him only to find him still drafting me a quarter lap later, laughing to himself. I tried to turn the tables but every time he remained behind me or slowed me down. Finally we came to a sharp turn into a long slightly uphill section (my best and fastest terrain) and I hit the hill hard. With the equivalent of a home field advantage I was finally able to drop him and rode the rest of my race draft free. 

I went on to lose one more position to a timberwolf who was better equipped to ride the bumpy flats and uphills at the end of the course than I was, and finished 19th in JV1 on a borrowed bike! Overall, I felt great, had a blast racing, and I can’t wait for the next one! Although next time I’ll be riding my own bike, and I won’t forget my helmet.

 

The Family Roadtrip, revisited

The road

My father was an academic, which, in his day, meant you were long on time but short on money (these days it means you are short on both), so family vacations, in those decades of cheap gasoline, were often road trips. Long road trips, with the longest of them all a tour in which some sizable fraction of our large family drove five thousand miles from Massachusetts to New Mexico and back. My memories of that Southwestern odyssey are faint and horrible; most pointedly I recall waking up in the back of a crowded station wagon on Christmas morning with gum in my hair and a view much like the one above--to a child, as bleak, snowless, and in general unChristmassy a vista as could be imagined. My father's memories, as revealed in recent email correspondence, are even fainter, though possibly more cheery. In the interest, then, of doing a better job preserving the historical record in this generation, and in case anyone might want to follow in our footsteps, here's a virtual triptik of our more recent tour of the area.

While gas is no longer cheap, flights to Las Vegas are. Our hotel offered this bizarre (in light of the Vegas water situation) view, a heated outdoor pool, and the novel (to the kids) experience of traversing a smoky gaming floor with your luggage.

Felix had contracted a non-COVID bug just before leaving, so after a morning drive through Red Rock Canyon he returned to the hotel while the rest of us headed for the Strip. Gid got his first glimpse of the Sphere, the holy place where his favorites, U2, are resident. He was also gratified to encounter an Elvis impersonator who, projecting the King to the present day, was drunk, grotesquely fat, and confined to a mobility scooter. Vegas always satisfies.

We also found spheres indoors, oversized and extra glitzy as per Vegas requirements. Gideon and I continued gawking while Talia, in a move she later regretted, detoured to the Big Apple rollercoaster.

By New Year's Eve Talia and Felix were both recovered so we set out for dinner and a nighttime view of the Sphere, which looms large everywhere you go.

It was New Year's Eve, and the Sphere provided the perfect backdrop to wait out midnight (though in truth we only made it to NYC time).

We left Sin City on New Year's Day to tour some even more impressive tech, the Hoover Dam.

We found the dam tour well worth the time: it is an incredible structure and we were delighted to rediscover the acoustics of dam-length tiled tunnels.

For some strange reason my previous visits to the Southwest had included totally skippable landmarks, such as Four Corners, but had missed the greatest landmark of them all: the Grand Canyon. We spent the next day hiking and driving along it.

There is no way to capture the majesty of this place in pictures or words (though this might help?). We came, we gawked, one of us threw a rock into it, and we left with a new sense of time and geography.

Seeing the rock formations of Monument Valley was the initial impetus for the trip: Gideon had noticed a shot on a screensaver and decided we should see it in person. How right he was. We arrived at dusk so had to save touring those distant beauties for the next day.

Our hotel--Goulding's Lodge--was nestled up against one of these red-orange buttes, however, and the same outfit ran a campground a little further on where we went to take sunset photos.

No photo editing here: sunset colors on these rocks are truly otherworldly.

And at dusk the rocks are transformed again into a lovely pink.

The next day we entered the Navajo park that contains the Mittens and other grand and bizarre formations for a cold but awesome hike.

One of the few pleasant memories from that long-ago Southwest trip was seeing (and smelling, oh the mesquite!) cave dwellings, and Talia and I were blown away by the ones we visited on Mesa Verde on our last tour through New Mexico, so we jumped at the chance to show the kids this isolated and magnificent example in the Navajo National Monument.

As a bonus we got to talk to some adorable rangers.

We took a break from all the red to see some pink (and blue snow!) at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. Worth the detour if you're ever in the neighborhood.

The next stop was Page, Arizona, where we took a guided walk through the over-photographed Antelope Canyon, visited the Glen Canyon Dam (no tour, unfortunately), and saw (or missed, for some of us) Horseshoe Bend. Striking red rock throughout.

Our penultimate day was spent at Zion, where, more than at any other point in the trip, I appreciated visiting in the less crowded winter season.

Having seen the best nature the Southwest has to offer we returned to the urban charms of Vegas where Gideon discovered robot-stirred boba tea.

We ended the trip with a visit to one of my favorite places, the Pinball Hall of Fame...

Where we played this unique head-to-head machine. Other than this epic battle the boys did not fight much, and at no point did anyone get gum in their hair. Roadtrip success!

The Family Xmas Letter, 2023

Typical 2023: scattered focus, Felix half out of the picture

Why hello there, happy family! Where does this picture find you, and when? Surely not here, in the tiny unheated barn from which we write, nor now, on the very eve of a chilly California Christmas. No, this photo must be from a happier place and time, and certainly a warmer one. So join us, dear Reader, as we ride the Family Christmas Letter into the welcoming past, with, at our side, everyone's favorite...

THE HOUSE:

Out with the very old....

Years of training probably had you salivating for dog stories right about now, but Brekkie analytics show that most readers stop after the Qubit section so we've put her last. Besides, the main character this year is not everyone's favorite inkspot, it is the house, which we demo'd and then...well, actually, that's as far as we've gotten. Anticlimactic and maybe not the best way to start a Christmas missive, much less Christmas, but it was surely the only way to begin this long overdue project. As serial Brekkie readers will recall, moving is not an activity we enjoy, but it turns out doing it while your house is being ripped apart around you is even less fun. If you want to go for really bottom of the barrel misery, however, you should try doing this with COVID! We really, really, really hope the worst is behind us but if there isn't a 2024 Family Christmas Letter it's because it wasn't.

TALIA:

If this is what disaster looks like I'll take it

Though you may have reason to think otherwise (and certainly we do), the pandemic has ended and so, too, has Talia's COVID-focused startup. Leave it to her to make unemployment look so great some of the rest of us are tempted to try it, hint, hint. Having already stretched her legs on the Inca Trail and slogged through the mud at the wettest ever Burning Man, Talia is now training for the AIDS Ride with Team Qweirdos (real made up name: donate here!) on the assumption that her next employer will be just fine with her taking off to bike to LA. Talia turned 50 this year, was awarded a rusty railroad spike for services rendered, and got rid of her unproductive chickens less murderously than usual.

FELIX:

Bespeckled boy

Felix was a very good boy this year so Santa brought him a new bicycle (not true, it was used, and, as a reminder, it wasn't a gift), a new phone (remember last year's count?), and an updated Pet Rock. When not texting gibberish, you will find Felix traipsing through fields of giant thistles, or writing letters to the editor, or digging sea turtle nests on an equatorial beach, his favorite fave. New this year, a girlfriend! We couldn't secure photo rights in time for publication so you'll just have to take our word for it that she is taller, more athletic, and even lovelier than he is. It's been great having her around: she has taught us that it actually is possible for teenagers to drive and we have taught her that it is likewise possible to eat food from the sea.

GID:

Inspired

Gideon woke up with a Rattle and Hum Under a Blood Red Sky with bed head. He breakfasted on fruit from The Joshua Tree, roasted over The Unforgettable Fire, and set off for what turned out to be a very late lunch in San Rafael because the bus only costs a dollar and he hasn't learned to read transit maps. A quick study, he learned How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb before dinner, but somehow never did manage to clear the table afterwards. Gideon fell asleep reading Surrender, a tired Boy at the end of a long October day. During most of the other 364 days this year you would have found Gid lost in the Binding of Isaac, a video game that combines two fun things, born-again Christianity and child abuse. Gideon traveled this year to three cities, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, and now understands why you only eat cheesesteaks in one of them.

ALEC:

Not my worst day

As the photo suggests, 2023 did not always reward Alec as he deserved. He bikes for his health, but ends up in the hospital. He got his first new tie in decades but discovered he no longer fits in any of his suits. He inherited money but wishes he hadn't. And so on. At work, Alec is building the world's most advanced artificial intelligence system, but isn't that what pretty much everyone in Tech is claiming in their Family Christmas content? In the year's one unambiguous win, Alec is the last person in Marin to still refuse to take up pickleball and he is very comfortable with that so please stop asking.

QUBIT:

You can't hide the qute

Qubit joined the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater where she premiered "Dances-with-Tents," for which she won the Nobel Peace Prize. No, not really, but not less really than any of the stuff we've written about her in previous Letters. Qubit's still a dog, of course, and still adorable even when gobbling dehydrated cow gullet, wiping her nose on the dish towels, or licking your fresh-from-the-shower feet. Do not smell her breath after the cow gullet, however.

THE VACATIONS:

At the risk of interrupting your Roman holiday, we'd like to present the annual Family Vacation Slideshow, aka a lot of miscellaneous stuff from all over because both Talia and I put together an album and rather than make tough choices we just sped up the montage.

And so we come together to the end of another Family Christmas Letter. We hope this cold cry for warmth cheers your holiday and that you are facing 2024 with less trepidation than are we. Happy New Year everyone!

The Election

 

He's not joking

I have never been eligible to vote in the Netherlands but am nonetheless a regular user of the stemwijzer, an online survey meant to guide Dutch voters through a thicket of political acronyms. I consult it because it is a thrill to participate, even vicariously, in a democratic process that involves many political parties, several of whom align nicely with my own very leftie views (a sad contrast to the US elections which are, for me, an invariant choice between the lesser of two evils). My favorites never do as well as I'd like, but even the centrist Dutch parties are pursuing policies I generally support, and it is the centrist parties that are the real winners time and again.

Not this election. In a pendulum swing pushed by immigration pressures, a long-standing housing crisis, leftover resentment at COVID-era policy, and contentious reforms to agriculture and related ecological issues, the furthest-right party has taken a huge number of parliamentary seats from the former leaders of the ruling coalition, and now controls almost a quarter of the "Tweede Kamer," or Dutch House of Representatives.

The leader of the winning party, pictured above, is a demagogue whom many are comparing with Trump: anti-immigrant, isolationist, inflammatory, careless of his country's constitution, funny-looking, in short, a political party of one with strong authoritarian inclinations. He is all this, but unlike Trump, whose only policy goal is his own aggrandizement, this politician believes in something outside himself: that the presence of Islam in the Netherlands is an existential threat to his retrogressive vision for that country. And unlike Trump, whose capacity for governing is limited and who just isn't that bright, this man, Geert Wilders, is an experienced and capable politician who speaks in whole sentences and is able to comport himself as an adult.

Most of my Dutch social circle is as left-leaning as I am, and, to judge by what I read on WhatsApp, are deeply worried about what comes next. They are also no doubt humiliated and offended to discover themselves now the smaller part of an electorate promoting an extremist who so clearly rejects social values they hold dear, such as tolerance and an open embrace of the wide world outside this small country's borders. Certainly part of my horror in watching Trump's eager celebration by a huge number of my fellow citizens is the realization, always there but usually ignored, that I am so not like they.

I have bad news and worse news, friends. The bad news is that even if Wilders fails to form a ruling coalition, he isn't going away: having won, his presence, if not his premiership, will be an even greater hindrance than previously to progress as you and I define it. The worse news is that regardless of his impact on the Netherlands, the insult of his election, which is to say the impact of this on your innerlands, is never really going to get better. The world has revealed itself to be a shittier place than you thought and, in the same stroke, has become even harder to fix.

The Deepest Fake

Faking it.

The generative artificial intelligence commonly in use today relies on machine learning models that express preexisting patterns in data of a particular type. Large language models of the sort that power ChatGPT, for example, express patterns found in language. Some of these patterns are well understood, some are tacit but obvious, and some surprise us altogether. That ChatGPT produces grammatical outputs is a requirement. That it apes formulaic documents such as Christmas Letters is no surprise. But that it can speak with the voice of a trusted friend is unexpected, and maybe unwelcome.

Generative AI capable of creating trusty outputs has been demonstrated in a variety of "modes": text, image, video. It seems a safe bet that anything that can be encoded as data can be synthesized in this fashion, and we have been encoding things since the invention of the punch card. There is a lot of data out there, and much of the activity in AI circles today is focused on "acquiring" specific datasets for this purpose (hence my current job title). Data acquisition has its challenges, but it's another safe bet that anything we really want encoded as data for model training can be so encoded, so acquired, and so modeled.

Current thinking states that the more data, the more powerful the model that can be made of it. There is a lot of fine print here, but nothing yet that invalidates this rule of thumb. And since data is often a direct function of time--that is, to get more data you can take more time to collect it--we can postulate that the larger the timespan considered, the more powerful the model that results. And if you want a larger timespan you have two choices: you can wait for time to go by, or you can mine the past.

Harvesting data from the past is a core occupation of economists, climate modelers, and, of course, historians. I anticipate that it will increasingly be the focus of AI developers as well. And, whatever their intentions, as they train more models on more historical data our communal capacity to generate outputs that look like artifacts of the past will increase.

You have, I trust, read 1984, in which the main character is employed by the Ministry of Truth to refabulate historical documentation. Orwell depicts this process as highly manual, a craft really, requiring careful manipulation of physical artifacts and the filing systems of giant bureaucracies. He also imagines it as carried out by a central authority working to a monolithic plan. In a digital world and with the new generative tools at hand, history will be faked by uncountable independent operatives working to their own idiosyncratic plans.

While there is widespread concern about the use of deepfakes to create competing narratives of current events (here's one recent example), the possibility of likewise manufacturing evidence to support competing narratives of historical events is less well recognized. There is, I think, a naive assumption that over time the truth will out. My concern is that the opposite will happen, with the past becoming increasingly uncertain and contentious as historical deepfakes proliferate.

As a (mostly non-practicing) professional historian I applaud the continued reevaluation of the past. History is constantly being rewritten, which is as it should be: new historians, with new perspectives and new tools, revisit old material and this changes history. In fact, new historical source material is discovered with some regularity, and AI is an increasingly important part of that process. Again, as it should be.

But there is a great difference between historians rewriting history and conspiracy theorists doing so. Both have an agenda--historians should never be treated as objective observers--but a properly trained historian is aware of this and uses rules of evidence and documentation that, say, Holocaust deniers merrily skip by. Professional historians also tend to write books and to publish in accredited journals, both of which, even today, usually appear in printed form, which is to say as durable, difficult to corrupt (though not impossible: see photo, above) records.

But a lie, famously, runs around the globe seven times while you're using inter-library loan to find the historical truth. And in the new age of generative history those lies are going to get better and better, and more and more numerous, and faster, too. And this while fewer and fewer of us are even trying to check a paper-encoded version. No answers here, just another plea to support your local library (and, post-publication, a Times piece that offers some suggestions).