Wanna bet?

It's no secret that you can bet on pretty much anything. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket provide a forum for wagering on the outcomes of "traditional" events and occurrences, like golf matches and basketball games, elections and Oscar winners. But you can also bet on what the temperature in LA is going to be tomorrow, where Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift will tie the knot, and when and if the Straits of Hormuz will reopen.

Sports betting sites like FanDuel and DraftKings are sucking folks - mostly young men - into addictive always-on wagering on every nuance of pretty much every sporting event known to man, including darts, chess and ping pong. (The general purpose sites cover sports betting as well.) A lot of the eyes on sports are not those of fans, but of gamblers, riveted on whether the next pitch will be a called strike or not - and whether they've won $200 on that bet.

While the sports betting is not good for the particular or general soul - gambling's always been addictive, but when you're holding your own personal bookie in your hand 24/7, well, truly awful things can happen. And more athletes themselves will be sucked into the easy money of a point here, a point there, which will end up corrupting sports more than they're already corrupted.

But the truly nefarious stuff goes on when insiders on the economic or geopolitical front, those who have knowledge of and/or control over potential outcomes, decide they want to make a bit of coin. Reputedly, there were White House insiders who cashed in on bets on when Iran's Ayatollah would be taken out. (Would any be surprised that members of the Merrily Grifting Trump family wagered an easy-money bet or two. On second thought, maybe not, when there are far larger grifts to grift.)

Then there are the smaller scale betting pools, the kind that a lot of us have been involved with. How many pounds will you your colleague's baby weigh? What team will be left standing in the March Madness bracket? A few bucks thrown in at work or the gym. It can be fun. And pretty harmless

But it's pretty odious when the pool at work is making life-and-death wagers, as is reportedly the case at Camp East Montana, and ICE detention center in Texas that's the nation's largest. (Everything really is bigger in Texas.) At Camp East Montana, guards allegedly have betting pools on who among the detainees under their "care" will be the next to commit suicide. I mean, it's not as if the guards have the power to make someone's life worse, to deprive them of care, to encourage them to kill themselves. Even to report a homicide as a suicide. Nah, ICE guys wouldn't do anything like that, would they?

Predictably, the DHS - an organizational just full to the brim of those of sterling character and moral rectitude - denies that there's any betting going on.

Look, not everyone who works for ICE or Border Patrol is an evil, violent, ill-trained thug. But enough of them are to reinforce such a sordid reputation. And with the decline in recruitment standards and training, the administration's encouragement of maltreatment of those rounded up and detained, out of control thug does appear in many cases to be the profile that the government is looking for and rewarding.

Factor in the amoral/immoral/money-grubbing malaise plaguing our society, and it seems entirely plausible that detention facility guards would try to make some bank betting on which detainee - whether a down and dirty member of Tren de Aragua who deserves deportation (but not maltreatment and torture) or some poor brown-skinned schnook who's been working under the table as a gardner for thirty years - is next for the coroner's wagon.

You don't think it could happen? You think DHS is telling the truth?

I say, wanna bet? 

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Info source: Mother Jones

Image Source: Amazon

I got shoes, you got shoes. All Trump's minions got shoes.

It's certainly no secret that Trump is a bully, a mean-spirited louse who extracts a goodly portion of the little joy he ekes out of life by humiliating others. Sometimes the humiliation is passive, as in the nauseating Cabinet meetings where his minions shamelessly fall all over themselves to praise Dear Leader - performances that wouldn't be out of place at a table headed by Vladimir Putin, Kim Jon Un, or Idi Amin. 

(Decades ago, I saw a documentary on Amin that featured a meeting of his underlings. There was also a scene in which Amin "won" a swimming race in which he walked across the waist-high part of a swimming pool using his arms to mimic taking strokes. When he got to the pool's edge, he looked up at the camera grinning and declared "I won." Sounds a lot like all those golf tournaments - and peace prizes - that Trump brags about.)

One of Trump's latest forays into the wonderful world of underling humiliation was gifting shoes to his Cabinet members and expecting them to wear them. Even if, because Trump ordered whatever sizes he thought would be best, the shoes don't fit.

The shoes that were the biggest misfits seemed to be those of the feet of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Whatever size Lil Marco - a pet name bestowed by Trump during the 2016 Republican primary season - wears in real life, it's apparently not the "big shoes to fill" Trump gave him.

“Trump has been buying $145 Florsheim dress shoes for allies, using the gifts as a lighthearted way to encourage loyalty and unity within his circle,” posted media X account Clash Report, citing The Times as a source. (Source: MSN)

These are the same shiny black dress shoes that Trump himself wears. 

It's certainly no surprise that Trump favors shoes made in China (or somewhere non-US-y). But it's a bit shocking that his shoe of choice is from Florsheim, a rather pedestrian brand. (On a side note, my father wore Florsheim's - black or brown wingtips. He sometimes converted old ones to golf shoes by having spikes put on them.)

After all, Trump is fabulously wealthy, with his wealth having increased over the past year - the first year of his second presidency - by a cool $1.4B. Surely, he could afford whatever shoes he wants. So why not look into Allen Edmonds? Sure, they're more than double the price of Florsheim's, but they're actually made in the US of A. Or he could have a bespoke cobbler hand make him his shoes. 

Of course, what he probably really wants is to be carried around on a sedan chair while wearing dem golden slippers.

Given that Trump's notoriously cheap when it comes to reaching into his own pocket, perhaps he just didn't want to spend a lot of gifts for his cabinet. At the same time, he didn't want them to think he was gifting them second best by giving them shoes that he himself doesn't wear. (On second thought, there's no reason to believe the cost of the shoes was personally borne by Trump.)

“All the boys have them,” said one unnamed White House official, while another told the WSJ, “It’s hysterical because everybody’s afraid not to wear them.”

“Recipients have taken to wearing their Florsheims around Trump, some apparently begrudgingly,” the WSJ reported. “One cabinet secretary has grumbled that he had to shelve his Louis Vuittons, according to people who heard the complaint.”

As you can see in the photo of Marco sporting his new Florsheim's, they appear to be too big by about half an inch. Not quite clown shoes, but not exactly comfy. And what a win for Trump that Rubio has been "ruthlessly mocked" for clomping around in them. Social media. Late night comedians. Marco Rubio, ha, ha, ha. 

Who among us hasn't worn (at least once, in the gift-givers presence) something we're not wild about - the color, the cut - because it was given to us by someone we cared aout. But that ain't what's happening here.

Nope. Ain't no one wearing those shoes out of fondness for their boss. And to think that no one has the guts to say, "Thanks for the nifty gift, boss, but I'd like to exchange them for something that fits." Because that would be suggesting that Trump had made a mistake, gotten something wrong. Talk about that ain't happening. Not with King Infallible on the throne.

Others who have been beneficiaries of Trump's shoe largesse include Cabinet members Pete Hegseth, Howard Lutnick, and Sean Duffy. (No word on whether Scott Bessent was on the gift list, but I can't see that insufferable imperious snob voluntarily wearing Florsheim's.) Which means it would be delicious if Trump decided to do it. Steven Cheung, Lindsey Graham, and Sean Hannity have also been giftees. 

In terms of everything else Trump is doing to destroy the country and the world, forcing someone to wear unwanted, ill-fitting shoes is pretty small potatoes. But it does provide us with yet another example of Trump's rancid personality. 

Meanwhile, I can draw some comfort from learning that Florsheim's parent company, Weyco, is suing Trump over tariffs. 

Duck and cover

I remember plenty of school fire drills. Back in the day, kids were actually killed in school fires - as happened to 92 kiddos (and 3 nuns) at Our Lady of the Angels (same name as my school!) in Chicago in 1958. This was before there was such a thing as a mass school shootings, so there was no such thing as active shooter drills. Just fire drills.

If there were any Civil Defense "Duck and Cover" drills at my OLA, I don't recall any. But this was the 1950's-1960's, so there must have been a time or two when the fire alarm went off and the nuns told us to stick our heads under our desks and make a perfect Act of Contrition. I just don't remember any. 

I think there was a black and yellow Fallout Shelter sign somewhere in the vestibule of our church, indicating that we could hide from an A-bomb in the church's basement. The nuns may have walked us down the hill, in a patrol line, to the church to point it out to us, but I don't think they went so far as to take us into the basement. 

Not that we weren't being constantly warned about an impending attack by Russian or Chinese Communists. This was the Cold War we're talking. But mostly the nuns were preparing us for a ground war, not bombs dropping from the heavens skies. What would we do, we were asked, if Commies stormed into our classroom, pointed Kalishnikovs at us, and asked us to deny our faith? Who among us would stand and declare "I am a Catholic" and join the ranks of martydom? 

It didn't occur to us to wonder why they'd bother asking, given that they had marauded their way into a classroom to find 50 or so parochial school uniformed kiddos jammed in. A classroom presided over by a nun with giant rosary beads swinging from her waist. A classroom with a prominently displayed crucifix and other religious paraphernalia all over the walls. Even the dullest Commie soldier could probably figure out we were all Catholics. 

This was also the era of backyard bomb shelters, but I didn't know anyone who had one. Bomb shelters were middle-class suburban, not blue-collar urban I guess. Maybe it was an economic thing, maybe it was philosophical, with us working stiff types deciding that if A-bombs and, later, nukes were being rained down on our heads, the world just might not be worth surviving.

At least that's how I like to think of it, because that's my philosophical stance on surviving a nuclear apolcalypse. Maybe it's because I don't have kids or grandkids, but when it comes to creating a survival shelter - and, in truth, where would I put one in my 1240 square foot downtown condo - I'm Team What, Me Worry? If the end of the world as we know it is upon us, I want to be at Ground Zero wearing a propeller beanie that says "me first."

Anyway, despite the threats heading our way from Iran, I haven't given a ton of thought to just how much terror we're in for, and whether Trump and/or the Ayatollah are actually capable of unleashing nukes. 

Apparently not so for those closer to the know.  As I saw in the news a couple of weeks back: 

...at least two top Trump administration officials have raced to purchase their own survival shelters designed to withstand an apocalyptic nuclear war scenario, The Telegraph reported on Sunday.

The revelation comes from Texas resident Ron Hubbard, who owns Atlas, a company that manufactures survival bunkers designed to withstand "biological [or] nuclear fallout, EMP attacks” and other catastrophic scenarios. Hubbard spoke with The Telegraph and revealed that since the U.S. attack on Iran, inquiries had gone up “tenfold,” including inquiries from two senior Trump administration Cabinet members.

“One of them texted me yesterday, asking me: ‘When will my bunker be ready?’” Hubbard told The Telegraph, referring to one of the officials. (Source: Raw Story)

Maybe they know something we don't know. After all, plenty of politicos and politico-adjacent swells have been making bank on insider info through both "savvy" stock market trading and making moves in betting-on-anything markets. Didn't I read that a couple of White House-ers made bank by betting on when the old Ayatollah was going to be taken out?

It's not just administration officials, of course. Hubbard has stated "that his recent clients were almost all “Christian, conservative CEOs,” which included “several of the wealthiest men on the planet,” though he declined to identify them."

Hmmmm. Thought these folks were looking forward to The Rapture.

Me? If the doomsday scenarios play out, I hope to rapturously (or not) enter the Big Sleep and call it a day.  

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Image Source: New Hope Free Press

I knew it all along!

I am a keeper of written lists.

Yes, I keep my calendar online, but each and every Sunday, I write out my macro level to-do list on a large (8 1/2" x 11") yellow pad. 

w/o whatever. Su-M-Tu-W-Th-F-Sa - with whatever's on the calendar for each day. Then a list of things I want/need to do for the week that aren't scheduled events. Items like order Orthofeet, organize tax info.

Every evening, I write out the to-do list for the next day on a small (5" x 7") yellow pad. This list covers scheduled events (my volunteer work, a dentist appointment, lunch with a friend); DuoLingo (I'm not learning much español, but I like to keep my streak going); and miscellaneous to-dos (laundry, mail out Easter cards, ping K, library). Needless to say, it's very satisfying to cross to-dos off the list once they're to-done. 

Before I go grocery shopping, I write out a shopping list. For this, I use a small red spiral notebook, and set things out - more or less - by where things are located in the store. Veggies and fruits grouped together; baking stuff; butter-eggs-cheese-milk; and so on.

When I go to the drugstore or hardware store for more than one thing, I either write those things down on a Post-it note and tuck it into my wallet, or - if there are enough items - use my small red spiral grocery notebook.

For all my lists, I use pen, but pencil would work just fine.

Yellow pads (large and small), Post-it notes, small red spiral notebook. Handwritten. (Even though my once near-perfect Palmer Penmanship has deteriorated to the point where I have to really focus on what I'm writing if I want to decipher the words.)

Yes, I know. Old school. (Old fogey.) After all, there's an app for everything, including list-making. So I could just type things into my calendar or some task-keeping, list-making app. Or even voice them in.

But as it turns out, the old-fahioned manual way of doing is good for you!

Recent research shows that handwriting enhances brain connectivity across regions associated with learning and memory, whereas typing doesn’t produce the same effect. Think about that for a second. The simple act of moving a pen across paper creates neural pathways that tapping on glass never will.

Isabelle Thibaud, a psychologist, puts it perfectly: “The physical act of writing activates different brain regions than typing. But it goes deeper.”

...Studies confirm that handwriting engages a broader network of brain regions involved in motor, sensory, and cognitive processing compared to typing, leading to more active cognitive engagement and better memory retention. (Source: Global English Editing)

When I do my Christmas cards, I used to write out the addresses, but decided that was too time consuming so I now use labels. A couple of weeks back, when I sent out my St. Patrick's Day cards - and there are only a dozen of them vs. 60 or so for Christmas - I got lazy and did labels. (Christmas. Valentine's Day. Paddy's Day. Easter. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Birthdays of course. I'm an inveterate card-sender.) Now I'll have to rethink the use of labels, as it would be better for the sake of my brain to hand-address the cards. I guess the tradeoff would be boosting memory and learning vs. how long it takes. And then there's the worrying about whether the Post Office will be able to interpret my scrawls and D-Liver D-Letter D-Sooner D-Better. 

Consider me D-Lighted to find out that old fashioned list-making is beneficial to the brain. 

Not that I didn't know it all along, but there's knowing and then there's knowing. 

Bravo, handwritten lists!

AI AI AI AI (Part 2)

There are so many AI failures and atrocities, it's difficult to know where to begin. Chatbots are coaching vulnerable folks to commit suicide, to commit crimes. The government wants the cooperation of AI vendors to accelerate the completion of the compleat surveillance state. (Can't wait.) There've been AI misdiagnoses. AI job losses - even when the AIs are nowhere near as good as the workers who've been replaced. AI mistargeting. (What's a hundred or so Iranian schoolgirls?)

Not all of AI's failures and atrocities are dire.

The other day, I had to call a bank for some information that required my speaking with a human. The first "human" I was connected to was clearly an AI. Either that, or someone doing a mighty good impression of an AI. Anyway, the AI "human" was able to finally get me to a human human. 

This encounter wasn't life threatening. Just annoying.

And there's no doubt plenty more where that came from.

Meanwhile, there are many (and increasing) instances of AIs that are just plain soul-crushing. And high on my list of the soul-crushers are AI when it starts tampering with the arts.

Last month I wrote about a Revolutionary War "series" concocted via AI. 

Ken Burns has nothing to worry about, but if folks start accepting AI slop wherever they may find it...I don't even want to think about it.

And one place where I sure don't want to see AI slop rearing its ugly little non-head is the written word, especially when it comes to fiction.

Even if that fiction is just romance novels, where AI is apparently making some headway.

Take Coral Hart.

There is no Coral Hart for reals. It's one of the many pennames of a modestly successful legit romance novel writer whose "real" work had been published by Harlequin. Hart started playing around with AI and found that she could churn out hundreds of titles a year and pull down six figure earnings. Sure, she's had to tweak the prose. AI is apparently not all that good at sex scenes and the nuances of true love, romance novel edition.

But once she's entered her prompts and high level outline, AI can churn a book out in less than an hour.

There are also certain phrases that AI uses to death. Those not-so-great sex scenes often include the heroes uttering his enamorata's name "like a ragged prayer." Whatever that means. (Maybe I'm just jelly because no one's ragged prayering the name Maureen.)

Romance novels are a big business, accounting for over one-fifth of adult fiction sales. And the big biz of romance is growing. Unlike, say, literary fiction, which is not. (Other than among us discerning readers.)

The genre may be especially vulnerable to disruption by A.I., for all the reasons that readers love it. Romance relies on familiar narrative formulas, like the guarantee of an “H.E.A.” or “happily ever after.” And romance novels are often built around popular plot tropes — like enemies-to-lovers or forced proximity — that can be fed into a chatbot.

A.I. remains contentious in the romance community. A vocal contingent of readers oppose its use and are quick to call out suspected transgressions. Furor erupted on social media last year when two romance authors published works with A.I. prompts accidentally left in. “You’re an opportunist hack using a theft machine,” the fantasy writer Rebecca Crunden wrote in an expletive-laced message on Bluesky. (Source: NY Times)

When it comes to writing fiction, you can put me in Camp Crunden. 

If an AI is doing the "writing," just who are you, Coral Hart. You're an outliner. A prompter. But you're sure as hell not a writer. Or not much of one. 

Maybe she doesn't care. She's added teaching to her repertoire, offering classes on how "writers" can use AI. She sees AI as the absolute wave of the future.

“If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race?” she said.

There's a lot of junk out there that's not written by AI, but produced the old fashioned way. And it's god-awful. I read a couple of books a week. (Thank you, Boston Public Library.) Some whodunits, but mostly serious (or quasi-serious) fiction. (No romance novels, no obvious beach reads. I.e., if "Nantucket's" in the title, I'll take a hard pass.)

I tend towards writers I know who are good because I've read them in the past. Or come recommended by friends and families I know to be good, serious-y readers. If I've seen a review, I'll try someone new. Or I'll just pick something off the shelf and give it a go. 

Some of the off-the-shelf writers turn into writers I'll be looking for. Others aren't all that well written, leaving me to ask "how in god's name did this get published?" (And, of course, giving my hope for my coming - ahem - literary career.)

The poorly written books I stumble across put me in mind of Truman Capote's words for those he found lacking: "that's not writing, it's just typing."

What does that make AI novels? They're not even typing! (Wonder if Coral Hart even types in her prompts. Or does she use voice?)

Romance novel fans consume a lot of books. The word ingest if probably closer to the true experience than is reading. 

As Elizabeth Ann West, an AI romance writer notes that, while many readers disparage the idea of AI generated novels, the reality may be different. 

“If you hide that there’s A.I., [a book] sells just fine,” she said.

Ms. West, who also teaches classes on how to write with A.I., has gotten blowback from opponents of the technology, including occasional death threats on social media. But she believes that in time, A.I. generated fiction will become widespread and popular.

“Eventually” Ms. West said, “readers will not care.”

Since I haven't read any AI-generated fiction, I can't tell you waht separates human writing from AI slop. Character authenticity? Nuanced interactions? True emotion? Original ways of describing things. Novel situations?

Just like I recognized the bank bot when I encountered him it, I'm pretty sure I'll know it when I see it. And I sure hope that AI doesn't put human creatives out of business any time soon.

AI AI AI AI! (Sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh!)

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Image Source: KosMosaicBooks

Triple deckers

I always tell people that I grew up in a triple decker, which is kinda-sorta true. I only lived there until I was six-and-a-half, when we moved to a modest one-family ranch on a street full of VA-loan new-builds on the street behind Winchester Avenue in Worcester. And that triple decker, with the gabled, pitched roof third floor, may technically be a two-and-a-half decker. 

In any case, it was definitely a three flat.

When I was a baby, we lived on the top floor, with the slanted ceilings in pretty much every thus-crampy room. Then the tenants on the second floor moved out, and we moved down. (Those tenants, the Deignans, now occupy a gravesite kitty-corner to where my parents, my grandmother, and my Uncle Charlie are buried.)

The third floor was never again occupied, but when I was a kid, it was a fun place to explore. As was the second floor flat, which remained empty after we moved out.

This was my grandmother's house, and although she could have used the rental income, once we decamped, Nanny and her boon companion, my feckless Uncle Charlie, stayed put on the first floor, the big old house otherwise empty. The story told was that Nanny didn't want the noise of tenants clomping around over her head, but I suspect it had more to do with the fact that my father did 100% of the maintenance, yardwork, snow shoveling, and everything else that needed to get done at 5 Winchester Avenue, including shoveling coal into the furnaces. Now he had a home and yard of his own to maintain, and could now do only 75% of the work at Nanny's that needed to get done and may not have been satisfied with whatever level attention Charlie was paying to keeping the place in shape.

Not that he had to do all that much. The heating was converted to oil, sparing Charlie for having to stir his lazy stumps and shovel coal. I believe that the only work around the house he did was mow the strip of grass that flanked the left side of the house, and scythe the clumps of grass on the steep front lawn. He must have shoveled, too. But my father dropped by to visit Nanny pretty much every day and took care of a lot of things for her.

The house I grew up in - at least until I was six-and-a-half (technically six-years-seven-months) - looked a lot different from the one in the Google Maps picture. 

For one thing, it was a dark chocolately brown with creamy yellow trim. The iron pipe railing going down the front steps looks the same, but that wrought iron design on the front porch is "new." As is the pachysandra or myrtle or whatever it is on the front lawn. We had grass tuffets, like the one that Little Miss Muffet sat on.

Whoever bought the house when my grandmother moved in with my aunt in 1974 made some "improvements" over the years. (The house, by then falling down around their ears - no surprise given that my father was dead and had been ill for many years before he died - was sold after Charlie died and Nanny no longer had his stellar companionship. Other than doing Nanny's grocery shopping - with her money - Charlie was pretty much useless. A freeloader. A low-end con man. A handsome, charming, sweet-talking rogue. But Nanny's golden boy to the end.)

For one thing, they painted the house white and pretty much dumped the trim. They replaced the retaining wall - which, in my memory was at least three feet high - with what looks like a one-footer. They closed in the two side porches (first and second floor), which were wondrous places to sit and watch the world go by. (These porches were known in Worcester parlance as "piazzas." As if.)

Somewhere along the line, we learned that, rather than do upkeep on plaster, the new owners dropped the ceilings. I suppose they replaced the toilets with new-fangled ones that didn't have the raised tank and the pull-chain flusher. I suppose they replaced that iron stove/oven, the size of a VW Beetle.

I hope they kept the pantries, the pocket doors, the hardwood floors. I hope they didn't paint over the magnificent mahogany banister in the front hallway - a hallway used once a year, on Christmas Day, when we walked down to Nanny's for dinner. Other than that, we were back entry/back stairs folks. 

I loved that house, and it holds pride of place in my Worcester memories.

But was it a true triple decker? Like this one? There were, in fact, plenty of triple deckers in my neighborhood. If you jigger with the Google Map, you can see a few of them just across Main Street from Nanny's. (As a side note: some claim that the triple decker was "invented" in Worcester by one Francis Gallagher. The claim has been disputed, but it certainly could be that some enterprising Irishman came up with the idea as a way to house his fellow Irishmen and women who were coming to Worcester in droves.)

I had friends who lived in triple deckers. I had more friends who, like me, had started out in triple deckers before their families graduated to single-family homes. I had a lot more friends whose parents had grown up in triple deckers, and whose grandparents still lived there.

My closest high school friend, Marie, live in a very nice but very small house, not all that far from the decker where her mother had grown up and where her grandfather still lived. Her mother's sister and her family lived above him. When she finished school, Marie's sister lived in a flat there.

This post on triple deckers was prompted by a recent article I saw in The Harvard Crimson. 

I don't regularly read The Crimson, although it's an excellent college paper and I do stumble across articles there every once in a while. This was one of those once in a whiles. 

The article focuses a bit on the iconic status of three deckers. Seriously, is there a movie made about working class, often criminal, Irish boyos that doesn't have triple deckers as a co-star. (C.f., as the Crimson story notes, “The Departed,” “Good Will Hunting,” and “Gone Baby Gone.”

And a bit on the history of deckers:

Historically, triple-deckers were built to house factory workers. Over time, they became a crucial form of upward mobility for working class families, especially immigrants who came to call Massachusetts home. But, as nativist sentiment in Boston grew between 1910 and 1930, the triple-decker became maligned for its association with these groups and it was slowly banned from zoning codes. (Source: The Crimson)

One of the issues wasn't just "nativist sentiment." A lot of those deckers were built quite flimsily and were fire traps. Anyway:

Today, many areas of Boston...are zoned for no more than two and a half stories. Building higher than that requires the same expensive special permission as an apartment building, making apartments a better investment for developers. 

Most of the Crimson story is about the role deckers can/will play in helping alleviate the housing crisis. They are, in fact, "poised for a comeback in many municipalities."

In 2024, the ex-urb city of Somerville okayed construction of three-unit buildings. Last year, Cambridge made four-story housing legal. Boston is debating whether to start permitting triple-deckers "— or even taller buildings —."

Will triple deckers solve the housing crisis? No, but sentimental old me welcomes their revival. There's just something about them...

But I'll end with this, the Crimson writer is named Jack Reardon. On a hunch, I gave him a google and found out that he grew up in the Boston area, and graduated from a well-known local boys Catholic high school. Now, for all I know, Jack Reardon's antecedents were lace-curtain grandees from the moment they arrived. But I'm a pretty good guesser, and I'm guessing that there's a triple decker or two in his background. 

Just sayin'.

By the way, good, well-written article, Jack.

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Image 1 Source: Google Maps
Image 2 Source: Wikipedia 

Dashing to the door...

When I worked full time, and my husband wast still among the living, we ate out regularly. As in at least 3-5 nights a week. I'd get home from work, we'd head out for a walk, and stop somewhere for dinner and drinks. If we didn't go out, we'd fend for ourselves, often with whatever was in the prior night's doggy bag. Sometimes we ordered a pizza, Chinese, or Thai, walking over to the restaurant to pick it up. I typically cooked on Saturday night. So there'd be leftovers on Sunday.

I didn't particularly enjoy cooking, but had about a dozen recipes on my menu. A couple of chicken dishes. A few pasta meals. Chili. Meatloaf. Stuffed peppers. Hot and spicy greebeans with pork. Quiche. A few of my dishes were sufficiently interesting that someone might actually think I was a cook. The curried chicken with currants, almonds, and peppers, served with couscous. The pasta with black olives, roasted red peppers, parsley, and walnuts, which I picked up while casually watching Julia Childs one day back in the early 1970s. 

So I could cook. While I always loved baking, I just wasn't wild about cooking. And was in no mood to cook when I got home from work. I was just as happy to get a little walk in and plunk myself down in a restaurant and start reading the menu.

I still don't cook every night, but I'm more of a cook now, and my repertoire is vastly expanded. In the past couple of weeks, I've made spicy lemon shrimp with lemon'd basmati rice. A shepherd's pie (which I left on the counter overnight, so only go one meal rather than four out of it). Scallops with orzo and cherry tomatoes. Peppered chicken breast with mashed potatoes and broccoli. An omelet with grilled asparagus. 

Other than the omelet, I cook in volume so there'll be something for at least two nights plus extras for the freezer. My brother comes over once a week for dinner and I'll send him home with Rubbermaid containers full of meals for his freezer, as his idea of cooking is opening a can of soup.

Not that mine isn't.

It's not as if I've never made a dinner out of a can of Italian Wedding Soup. (Or some instant oatmeal doctored up with apples, nuts, and raisins.)

These days, once in a very blue moon, I'll order a legit (non-pizza, non-Chinese) meal from a local restaurant and walk over to fetch it.

Never say never, but I have only had food delivered a couple of times in my life. And that was before DoorDash and Uber Eats. Never say never, but I have never had a meal delivered by either of the above.

Not that there's anything wrong with it.

Other than that a lot of the local deliveey drivers are on unlicensed ebikes, and are a menace to pedestrians. They ignore stop signs, red lights, one way streets. They weave along sidewalks, scattering walkers as they speed by. They drive pell-mell through the leafy (other than in winter) pathways of the Boston Public Garden. They make an awful lot of noise revving around. I live in fear that I'll die in fear being hit by one of them.

Yes, I know they're all just trying to make a living. But I really don't like having them around.

Yet I know that there are a lot of folks who rely on them. 

Some even live in my building, where three young women share a flat and where some mornings I walk out and find on the mail table in the foyer a bag containing what looks like an Egg McMuffin that's just been dropped off. Is the nearest McDonald's even a 10 minute walk away? And how hard is it to pop an English muffin in the toaster, scramble up and egg, and microwave a slice of Jimmy Dean sausage patty?

But as someone who has eaten out an awful lot during my life, who am I to judge?

Yet judge I do.

The NYTimes ran a recent article on the meal delivery business. Turns out that:

In 2024, almost three of every four restaurant orders were not eaten in a restaurant, according to data from the National Restaurant Association. The number of households using delivery had roughly doubled from 2019, just before the pandemic, the group said. And in a survey last year, about one-third of American adults told the association that they ordered food for delivery at least once a week. (Source: NY Times)

Some are ordering in a lot more than that.

Like at young woman in San Diego who spends $200-300 a week (on a salary of $50K!) dining in on meals like spaghetti with marina from a spot just down the street. When she could cook up some pasta and open a jar of Rao's for a fraction of the cost. 

And all that delivery isn't making her happy:

Ordering in has eaten away at her savings, she said, and led her to socialize less. She tips generously, but worries that the delivery drivers are poorly paid.

Then there's the Atlanta-based marketing exec with two kids..."he and his husband spend about $700 a week to order in."

“I am so burned out and tired, I would rather just throw my credit card at the problem and delay that unhappiness until the bill comes,” he said.

I understand perfectly. Cooking after you've put in a solid workday plus commute is a colossal drag. 

My favorite sitch in the article was that of a young data analyst in LA who moonlights for Uber Eats "to pay off his debt from ordering too much food delivery." 

What a world we live in...

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