[ [ 1529229219, [ "Arrived from iceland. http://fuseki.net/iceland2018", "House decorations in West London. My next stops bring me back in time: visit two old go friends and their baby north of London, then an old Japan/London friend, then a college debate buddy. Then head over to Spain for a few days in Madrid, then a wedding in Granada, then a day in portugal. Then a day in NYC for the first time since I graduated." ] ], [ 1529232454, [ "Combined residential & commercial. West london was like another world - run-down houses with a very distinctive, seedy style, mixed with huge complexes. The desire of the government for control feels even stronger than the US. Maybe that desire is best expressed as a ratio of people who believe they know best and are willing to implement their vision by law, vs people who don't care." ] ], [ 1529233252, [ "Social bulletin board near Harrow and Weldstone station. Fire Safety, Exploitation Protection, Anti-racism, Sunday music, Taiqi training. It's touching how hard the system is working to help people, and I approve of all of this effort to build connections. It is annoying to have the failures of society presented so publicly, but it's good that people care and are willing to suffer it in order to increase happiness." ] ], [ 1529235594, [ "Beautiful fields." ] ], [ 1529235604, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529237378, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529237401, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529237402, [ "bmx biking + camping" ] ], [ 1529241216, [ "Happy baby. They have a great outdoor veranda with a go board set up." ] ], [ 1529243806, [ "Quite weird to have the license plate linked to the dealership. Apparently the first two letters represent the district, and the second two mod 50 represent the year the car came out - this represents Redding, 2016." ] ], [ 1529247202, [ "We went to a pub and drank warm beer. The rules about being carded are lenient. In the US, if you look under 40 they'll ask you. Is our strictness a product, or cause, of the alcohol problems? Neither country has really solved it. We've been living with and through alcohol for a few thousand years - plenty of time for adaptations to be selected for. So we can probably never get away from it." ] ], [ 1529260493, [ "The old village - unsurprisingly, not too busy." ] ], [ 1529260826, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529260889, [ "Very euphemistic gravestones - 'fell asleep', etc. And they don't charge by the letter." ] ], [ 1529261077, [ "They're wearing much worse than those in Iceland. Is it acid rain, or just worse stone to start with? Visiting cemeteries seems like one of the easiest ways to get in touch with the cultural, religious, historical and ceremonial aspects of a foreign country." ] ], [ 1529261317, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529308346, [ "There are very few signs, either ads or for navigation, on local roads in the UK, although downtown there are ads everywhere. They do have a lot more litter than Iceland, though." ] ], [ 1529310713, [ "Viewing a country through the lens of addiction is pretty easy. There are gambling shops and pubs everywhere. The taller guy, whose pants were falling down, was acting for a runner for the other - taking something inside, then coming back out with something for him to sign before they parted ways. Is he getting around a ban, voluntary or imposed on him, or existing bad debts?" ] ], [ 1529311866, [ "Pretty sweet 5br house with 20 acres for 2.25m USD... I wonder what kind of other restrictions come with this?" ] ], [ 1529335046, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529335046, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529337312, [ "This 24-hour clock near the prime meridian starts at zero, rather than the crazy '12:00' thing. I just realized that whether noon is AM or PM is actually not clearly defined, and varies by country & era." ] ], [ 1529337754, [ "The distinctive thing about parks is that nobody has slapped in some colorful flowers - they're fine leaving them looking just overgrown." ] ], [ 1529341072, [ "'Long boats' are some kind of legacy vacation activity, caused by an era of narrow tunnels.

The unique aspects of a culture, which would never be created and sold new, today, are fascinating. They're things which modern companies would rationally not pursue, since there can't be a business moat around them, or a way to defend an innovation. Inventing things in that space, between things which can generate the marginal rate to have smart people work on them for money, and things which already exist, is only explored by curiousity, by those who have time or money. As the world is homogenized, existing things like this survive on their own merits, in culture. That's why I favor quite a lot of local independence and inefficiency - to produce environments where the space is larger - activities which aren't immediately exploitable, but which might eventually grow to be culturally and economically sustainable on their own, but which can't be found by local hill-climbing." ] ], [ 1529348704, [ "The barbican centre, in the City of London, is already a key location for conspiracy theories about the rosicrutians and Knights Templar, and also happens to have this crusader cross. Inside it's like living in a space station in a Stanley Kubrick movie - long, homogenous hallways with 70s quality of life features (embedded garbage chute, lockbox for mail delivery). Why is brutalism so attractive? It looks nice from a distance but there is so much lost opportunity. The barrenness of the walkway on the right, for example. The property is in the process of being officially 'protected' which will permanently make it impossible to improve, and humanize. Ever since I watched the Stewart Brand BBC documentary 'How Buildings Learn' ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0 ) I've wanted to live in a place where I had the right to modify it without requesting permission first; to make spaces to suit a purpose." ] ], [ 1529355014, [ "Watching the UK score a goal and win to advance. The crowd was more excited, more deeply, than I've ever seen an american crowd. Are there any international sports where Americans are united? I suppose the olympics. The alcohol culture here is amazing - outside the windows to the right were ledges for resting your drink on, on the street. What would happen if the US tried this? How nice can a culture be, and still be steady-state? The UK is already beyond that point, I guess." ] ], [ 1529393116, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529393677, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529393843, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529393852, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529394029, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529399513, [ "This man with a spectacular outfit was one of a group of four young Chinese people on the way to Mardid. Behind him a tearful couple saying goodbye, and a veiled mum with her two kids." ] ], [ 1529421775, [ "Arrival in Madrid: 'No racism, no Marxism, new rights: got, country, justice.' This looks like the slogan of one of the new far-right spanish parties, but I couldn't narrow it down to just one." ] ], [ 1529421949, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529436585, [ "Google runs a startup space - I went wandering around and stumbled into this lecture, which google translate totally failed to help me to understand, while searching for the meetup of the 'effective altruist and rationality society of madrid'. I found them, and we did lightning talks - which with 5 people, is a lot easier than it sounds. They're a wonderfully nice and sincere group of guys. It's not too different than the type of person you meet in SF - sincere and intellectual, and believes that most problems can be solved with more thought and discussion. But they seemed less burnt by PC, and more connected to their own, still existing 'mainstream'." ] ], [ 1529445795, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529447149, [ "The frame is much nicer than the painting. Perhaps it's of a medieval puzzle store?" ] ], [ 1529462001, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529490811, [ "This method of selling bulk goods brings me back to Costa Rica. Spain is not as far along the road of market design of sales channels as the US is: prices still reflect the cost to produce. At some point, stores realize that their cheaper varieties are undercutting the profit of their more expensive - so they drop the cheapest. This even applies when someone is brand-loyal - in that case, the biggest blocker to the next sale is the existing inventory in the person's cabinet. So, even when the marginal cost to produce another item is only a few percent, reducing its size (de-contenting) is valuable, since it speeds up the total sales proportionally to the reduction, not through savings from the lesser ingredients required.

Spain not having that at least in some areas is just wonderful. Consumers get some of the surplus that comes from cheap production methods. What laws keep this open? How can we get it here? At least we have Walmart trying to keep prices low. I've heard that just a few percent of price-sensitive shoppers are responsible for keeping prices down, to everyone's benefit. But why are Scandinavian countries so expensive?" ] ], [ 1529491782, [ "There are motorcycles parked all over downtown Madrid, without signs or regulation. The country is so much more relaxed than England! There isn't anything to indicate that regulations have much effect, compared to the character of the people living in a place." ] ], [ 1529496470, [ "I just saw an interesting scene while walking through El Retiro. This guy was walking around a large fountain with an unusually steady gait. I wondered why, til I saw a police car on the exact opposite side, doing a loop. He was hiding! The cops drove away and he set up shop again, laying out hats and other knickknacks. It's something you'd often see in China too... Low level cops being sent to disrupt people just trying to make a living. In both cases the sellers are operating without a license and not paying taxes, and foreigners to some degree (in Beijing they were internal migrants, here they look to be from Africa). In both cases it seems hard to justify stopping people from providing a service that has customers. But it guess the cops might worry about the creation of an all-illegal network with lookouts, incentives to bribe cops, and a group of people without social connections, who might be exploited. Right afterwards I bought a water from a local vendor, and he pulled change out of his personal wallet - that's not the act of someone who's paying accurate sales or income tax, either." ] ], [ 1529496478, [ "There's also a bias against people without strongly established reputations. Being able to drop everything and leave, and not lose too much, makes someone kind of scary to deal with... 'Fly by night' attitude - it's also why areas near ports are so dangerous, since sailors can skip town. It's not a fair bias, but effort to establish local connections makes people less scary - these guys know Spanish, and one of them has the Spanish flag draped around his shoulders, so they're taking steps to be more connected." ] ], [ 1529496493, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529496584, [ "Here they have set up shop. On the right is some kind of performance art, in what must be extremely hot costumes." ] ], [ 1529499276, [ "This guy was playing 'Careless whisper' on dreamy electric guitar. It's funny to think that that melody will probably outlive the constitution. i.e. destroy all media and bring world population down to 1000, and you would still have someone who knows the tune.", "The rowboats are real wood, not the plastic square-bow models you get everywhere in China." ] ], [ 1529526490, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529527295, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529531082, [ "Schoolgirls out at 10pm on the night of the solstice to see West Side Story." ] ], [ 1529531240, [ "Everybody's watching the games." ] ], [ 1529564933, [ "I'm still on Iceland time, and woke up to full sun at 7am." ] ], [ 1529570025, [ "I love spanish medieval symbolism. The stickers remind me of China, but have more detail. Offers to connect. There are also stencilled offers on the top of the call boxes." ] ], [ 1529574727, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529591143, [ "This one is tough, but has some great lines - finding the rhythm of the first stanza is great." ] ], [ 1529611092, [ "In Iceland the speed limit is 90kph, and people drive 90-110. In spain it's 120, and they go up to 140.

Iceland was almost all two lane roads, but here they have room to pass; I followed a Mercedes which passed 10 people in sequence, each time going to the left lane, passing, then coming back to the right lane. It's amazingly law-abiding and civil. In California everyone involved would have been sitting in the left lane, thinking 'I'm a fast one', and getting passed on the right - it takes at least four lanes to have proper filtering out here, but Spain can do it with just two." ] ], [ 1529612282, [ "Surprisingly, there's almost nothing but scrub for a few hundred miles south of Madrid all the way to Granada. I was given a super powerful opel for the drive; dropping it off in Malaga, the man there was the most friendly I've ever met - glanced over the car before declaring it fine and shaking my hand." ] ], [ 1529613140, [ "Somebody was still lighting candles at this isolated church 'Recuerdos de Santa Lucia', just starting to accumulate grafitti." ] ], [ 1529644818, [ "There are even more roundabouts here than England; they produce a distinctive track in Google Maps." ] ], [ 1529644864, [ "Only a roundabout country has paths which just stop and turn around on a dime." ] ], [ 1529657524, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529665171, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529666551, [ "The most interesting thing about the Alhambra is how it was designed for temperature control. These hedges are set up to channel wind." ] ], [ 1529669823, [ "Immodest dress." ] ], [ 1529670234, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529670469, [ "I would like there to be one day of the month where you don't get let in unless you dress formally. It would make pictures look so much better if everybody was in a suit/dress. I realize that's anti-egalitarian of me. But going further, I'd also like a day where it costs 10x or 1000x as much to get in. That way there would be more daily variation. Same theme as the comments above - let diversity in experience happen. On the other hand, the reason we don't do that is a justifiable fear that admins would hide behind that reason to raise the price for everyone. In general the norm of 'equality' is good, but prevents a lot of experiments." ] ], [ 1529670730, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529671770, [ "The city itself is pretty great - baked clay in old buildings straight out of the middle ages. Do they just not allow any modern development at all?" ] ], [ 1529703593, [ "The wedding party in front of the Alhambra - 9:40pm" ] ], [ 1529775663, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529775881, [ "Simpsons graffiti outside Malaga" ] ], [ 1529784563, [ "Fabregas manhole cover" ] ], [ 1529784713, [ "Malaga reminds me of Taiwan - high, flat buildings taking up all the space with enough density to have stores everywhere." ] ], [ 1529784747, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529785077, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529785244, [ "I went back and looked up the poem that my college Japanese teacher spent some time on. I love how it's reasonable to have really variable translations, and lots of them." ] ], [ 1529790198, [ "The bride is a famous spanish-language harry potter fanfic author!" ] ], [ 1529801444, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529809947, [ "Street signs in Malaga." ] ], [ 1529828544, [ "Legacy feelings are really powerfully evoked in Portugal - symbols and religiousity is everywhere. All the streets have these complex royal insignia." ] ], [ 1529828869, [ "Fading metal business plates for dentists." ] ], [ 1529830025, [ "I really liked the feel of Portugal. Everything is solid." ] ], [ 1529830172, [ "Graffiti, and steep grass." ] ], [ 1529830285, [ "This is the modern world." ] ], [ 1529830361, [ "Portugal has <1% muslim population. Not what I expected!" ] ], [ 1529830433, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529830539, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529833891, [ "Girl listening to violin, just down the street from the oldest bookstore in the world." ] ], [ 1529834978, [ "Canyon-like streets with no traffic on a sunday. When did we stop adding decoration to the outside of buildings? Is it just too expensive?" ] ], [ 1529835503, [ "Tattooed tourists or locals?" ] ], [ 1529837084, [ "I rented a bike (much easier system than other cities) and rode along the seaside. There are lots of bikers out in full gear." ] ], [ 1529838202, [ "Brutalist trigonometry" ] ], [ 1529838314, [ "I should have studied Portuguese rather than Spanish - better cognates." ] ], [ 1529838376, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529838433, [ "Lots of art-grafitti along the bike path" ] ], [ 1529838572, [ "Which face do you see first?" ] ], [ 1529838721, [ "A dog playing fetch" ] ], [ 1529838945, [ "An argument about bike passage rights. The guard (in brown) chased down and started yelling at this guy who had temporarily opened the fence to get out of a construction area. They didn't really want to fight, though, just yell. As I approached, some other bikers addressed me in Portuguese 'no pode faltar'. Here and in Spain, I was addressed in the local language." ] ], [ 1529839174, [ "Super intense graphic design for fishing-related services." ] ], [ 1529839280, [ "Shaven-headed lady in a yellow suit doing fashion photography at noon on a hot day." ] ], [ 1529839742, [ "This is only a precursor to more massive grafitti on the train line." ] ], [ 1529840169, [ "I'm surprised this dapper outline doesn't have a fedora!" ] ], [ 1529841476, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529841765, [ "Another Chinese-run shop selling incense and grafitti bottles." ] ], [ 1529842105, [ "A young man proudly holding a cell phone accessory his dad just bought, outside a Chinese fruit market." ] ], [ 1529842319, [ "A typical Portuguese cafe/convenience store/sitdown restaurant. They're everywhere and serve all three purposes. This one had three guys drinking beer and doing ostentatious handshakes to a series of newcomers, along with retirees eating their lunch." ] ], [ 1529843560, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529843961, [ "Typical Lisbon streets. Simple designs with decorations. The streets seem unregulated, but everybody is following the rules and it's kept up nicely." ] ], [ 1529844104, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529844356, [ "A 1 euro shop: ABRE O OLHO" ] ], [ 1529867918, [ "Idolatry? or just a good snack." ] ], [ 1529868145, [ "The Chinese Evangelical church of Portugal uses wechat! Scanning it still works, [6 months later], which is a change - for a while, wechat had forced expiration on QR codes, probably as some kind of dampening force for group joining and spreading." ] ], [ 1529868808, [ "Three soccer games going on at once - nobody is bothered by the fact that the open-ended goal leads right onto a street, because there is no traffic. Lisbon seems really diverse and chill." ] ], [ 1529871714, [ "Southern Europe's public billboards were a lot better than England's. Movers using what's app, and guys selling used video games & computer systems, rather than painful self-examinations of society's failings." ] ], [ 1529871724, [ "Lisbon is the sleepiest big city I've ever been in. Everybody's walking around, not uptight or nervous, eating and chatting. Not much traffic on the roads. If the national motto were 'Puravida' I wouldn't be surprised. Someone's left their phone out, charting, in this abandoned, super high tech laundromat." ] ], [ 1529873593, [ "Canyon-like evening street like a lullaby." ] ], [ 1529873695, [ "Everything about the design of the Hotel Do Chile was great - the elevator floor chooser like a giant cell phone, and the key (in reflection) modeled after an old mechanical punch card." ] ], [ 1529914053, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529916081, [ "Chinese ladies dancing in the public square near Rossio. I wonder if they are doing the government-advised songs, or going on their own?" ] ], [ 1529917106, [ "Big lines of tourists all trying to buy the same ticket to Sintra.

I'm always sad to see humans following automation so blindly - the lines are bad enough to hire someone to sit there and help foreigners use the machine; Buy why don't they just have her buy a hundred tickets and sell them for cash, hand to hand, and speed the whole process up?" ] ], [ 1529921495, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529921745, [ "This rooster was acting a lot more like a bull!" ] ], [ 1529922551, [ "Clustering here is a lot less tight than in iceland." ] ], [ 1529922697, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529924916, [ "A Moorish castle" ] ], [ 1529925340, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529926708, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529930479, [ "Looking down one of the wells at Quinta de Regaleira. Apparently they have to do with the Tarot, but all the fine edges at this place are worn away. I imagine when this was full of royals jockeying for position the social distinctions were fine." ] ], [ 1529931039, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529931543, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529931703, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529932124, [ "Examining a big beetle." ] ], [ 1529932125, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529932161, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529932169, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529932318, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529933619, [ "The graffiti on the way to Sintra is out of control. I am of two minds. Marking territory is an ancient human impulse, and the crews seem to respect each other. But it's also mainly meaningless braggadacio, without much artistry, and really repetitive. Sometimes they do go for representational stuff, but it's mostly cartoon. Just the brains picture of the world, including our mental distortions, not a clear view of what's really there.", "The creativity of it is kind of neat. I imagine they think all day about the mission of the night - how to get in, what to draw, and trying out new techniques. Do they use cardboard stencils? Or are there variable thickness, sharp edged nozzles now?" ] ], [ 1529935778, [ "The entire hour-long trip is accompanied by these 'KL'S guys.'" ] ], [ 1529937308, [ "Once robots can see the world better, we'll put them into wall-walking spiders that climb up and down, erasing grafitti, in a constant battle with custom bots to put tags on giant public canvases." ] ], [ 1529943042, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529966669, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1529975998, [ "Looking down at the sandy hook beach we would drive out to, and pretend we were the last people on earth at, as long as you didn't turn landward." ] ], [ 1530008979, [ "Back in NYC. Overall I loved it, compared to SF." ] ], [ 1530010022, [ "Not many people watching the world cup." ] ], [ 1530010784, [ "This guy was walking along, addressing the world amplified: 'Our president is No Good!. But he followed this up with 'I Love You' and 'Nice Pants'!" ] ], [ 1530011016, [ "NYC Streets have a lot going on. I have never seen a changelog on a sign before ('New')" ] ], [ 1530012127, [ "The 90s weren't so long ago!" ] ], [ 1530012419, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1530012419, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1530012582, [ "A concert for moms and babies. How many years until the carriages are all automated, with GPS, auto-drive, lane-keeping, shocks and refrigerators in the base?" ] ], [ 1530016421, [ "I didn't even realize that was possible." ] ], [ 1530018805, [ "NYC" ] ], [ 1530021748, [ "Suffered Pain? You Need Law! 3.8 review on google maps, with 46 reviews. Google should start annotating pictures in photos with reviews." ] ], [ 1530021833, [ "815 reviews, 4.0 rating on Google Maps, but permanently closed. I'd like to see a google maps-integrated todo list app, where you would enter your interests, in specific or general terms, and then as you walked around Google would let you know about opportunities. 'Weird local monument 50m away, want me to direct you there?'. 'Local art museum much, much busier than normal - something is going on, want to go?' etc. Both for unexpected exploration, and for routine errands like 'I need to pick up some gloves'" ] ], [ 1530040755, [ "The trip is coming to an end. Evaluations:
Iceland - I could totally live there, at least for half the year, given good blackout shades.
England: it would be interesting to live there, but the feeling of political powerlessness and loss would be even stronger than in SF.
Spain: could totally live there, the place feels amazing.
Portugal: extremely comfortable, but seems backward and sleepy.
NYC: I would love to go back and live for a while, given money/job." ] ], [ 1530043598, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1530048327, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1530048327, [ "kill" ] ], [ 1530263728, [ "Back in yellow-grassed, concrete california. The next trip is to Korea, China, Japan, and Hawaii, stay tuned!" ] ] ]