Sunday Edition #2 - A Review of Abundance, Mario Kart World, and Office-to-Residential Conversions
Welcome to another Sunday Edition where I share what I’ve been up to!
📚 Reading - Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson + Newsletters
I still have a backlog of discourse to wade through (I’m up to 20 April in my newsletter reading backlog), but I did read Abundance this week. I liked it. I feel the diagnosis is correct. The USA *should* build more (cheaply) and good-intentions regulations/laws/compliance are sometimes getting in the way. A solution doesn’t come from one lever, but I’m very pro YIMBY and a housing-theory-of-everything proponent. Building more housing has a massive amount of downstream benefits. That being said, it feels like the goal of the book is to shift the overton window to allow liberal/left politicians to acknowledge the tradeoffs. That if you’re going to be a society that builds en-masse for the people again, you are going to have to trade off other goals (like, sometimes foregoing extensive environmental assessments). Ultimately, while the book presents some solutions (like, incentivizing outlier research by also giving out random lottery grants), I actually don’t know how you’re going to change the political will to do all of this across the aisle in the current US electoral climate. It sometimes feels it is already too entrenched. I guess a nudge is better than nothing. Maybe other nudges (like electoral reform in things like ranked choice voting), can help bring about this more amenable political climate.
✍️ Writing - Novel #2 Edits
Feedback and edits keep rolling in for novel #2. I’ve also started the process of writing my query letter/s for agents and have been speaking to authors. No idea what this experience will be like and unsure what my expectations should be. If you’re an agented author, I would love to talk to you. Please email me!
Also. I joined a local writer’s salon. I should’ve done this a lot sooner. Write with other writers and sitting in on things like short story feedback groups. It’s great fun.
🕹️Gaming - Mario Kart World
Haven’t had much time this week to play it, but when I did, I’ve been playing online. I’m really enjoying the Knockout format. One long race, and as the race continues, the players that are last, are knocked out. Best I did was coming in 2nd. But, it’s a lot of fun and starting to get a hang of some strategies for it. Haven’t really touched the open world parts of it yet.
🏃♂️ Running
Since I’m slowly building a foundation for an ultra trail race in November, the type of running has changed. Trying to add more trail runs into my week. And, I’ve also joined a local running club. There’s so many of them here in DC. For now, keeping it easy and casual. That said, the heat and humidity is tough. What’s new? 😅
💾 Links
Office-to-Residential Conversions
I’ve always been curious what goes into the recent trend of office-to-residential conversions.
But as we started designing, we ran into major hurdles:
Window placements limited how many livable units we could create.
Plumbing retrofits became costlier than expected, forcing layout changes.
HVAC constraints required reallocating condenser spaces.
Fire codes and egress issues altered our initial plans.
I’ve been in one of these buildings, in Financial District in NYC. By far the most interesting conversions is when they don’t actually change much of the internal structure. When you look at the layouts, it clearly resembles an old office. Not necessarily as livable, but seeing the shape of the old office is so interesting to me.
Family Structure & Ideology
I’ve been on a quest to understand my own history better (Afrikaner) in relation to where I currently find myself (East Coast US). Particularly, with regards to whether I might sometimes have the wrong lens on American family culture. Westernised South Africa do share a lot of similarities to other Western cultures, but I want to understand to what extent I see things differently based on my own upbringing and milieu.
This video captures a broad lens to how family structure might be related to general ideologies of governance. Great food for thought, especially if you are an immigrant in another country.
is on a roll recently with excellent articles. This one echoes my own sentiments on the value of people.From my article from my walk on the Camino:
The difference now is that after saturation, the harder part is to switch off. The ability to have a rich social life without a digital presence is increasingly seen as highly valuable and socially desirable traits. It signals high status because there's no reliance on platform mediated sociality. These people will drive the growth to opting out. They will prefer an in-person meeting over the likelihood that an email could’ve been filtered through an LLM.
From Anu:
Some interactions will get faster and more synthetic. But presence doesn’t scale, and that will make truly human work not just rare, but increasingly unequal. As teams get smaller and orgs flatten, the leverage of the relational role only grows. With luck, the future will start to look more like the past: relationships at the core. I’m so bullish on the resurgence of the right-hand man. Hell, maybe even the right-hand renaissance man. 10x is cool, but 1:1 might be more powerful.
🎶 Music
Rival Consoles - Fluctuations
Been enjoying the new Rival Consoles album a lot! Great for running. 🏃
That’s it for this week, friends.
Hope you enjoy a good sunset.
Simon
PS. Congratulations on the South African cricket team for winning an ICC trophy for the 1st time in 27 years! 🥳