Payam's Place

In 2002 I signed up for my first broadband service, 1.5 megabits per second digital subscriber line (DSL) from AT&T. After a day’s worth of work, the technician got my service going, and I was thrilled to “surf” the web nearly 30 times faster than I used to with a 56 kb/s dialup service with my US Robotics modem. The DSL connection was made with substantial additional equipment that was connected to my gigantic tower computer with an Ethernet cable. 1.5 Mb/s felt like bliss at the time.

16 years later, Spectrum Internet and ASUS deliver speeds in excess of 300 Mb/s to my handheld device, my iPhone X, wirelessly and with equipment that take up about 10% of the space my tower PC occupied. This speed is over 15 times faster than the DSL service I was receiving for the same price. Numerically, this is only two orders of magnitude improvement over this period of about two decades, but the convenience of small footprint and wireless communication make it seem substantially better. It is somewhat sad to be old enough to have noticed such dramatic technological changes.

Naturally, therefore, I now seek separation from the deluge of “information” this digital pipeline delivers. It’s merely nice to know that my operating system upgrades won’t take 20 minutes anymore. This pipeline makes the merging of human and the network that much more feasible by swallowing the entirety of one’s attention span. Still, it’s better to have practical reasons for evading this frightening outcome.

This is, bar none, the most beautiful presentation of kashk baedemjan (fried eggplant and why) I have ever seen. The classic Persian appetizer has gotten the ultimate Western treatment. I shall report on whether the results tasted as good as they look.

Update: yes, it was very tasty, but not as flavorful as the presentation would suggest. It was a tad on the dry side. Eggplants grown off season are rarely as flavorful as those harvested during their normal cycle.

Facebook has been embroiled in scandals from the start. Let’s try to put some numbers to the effects of these scandals.

[poll id=”6″]

The funniest thing about this email is the fact that the sender warns me against discounting his poor English skills. Perhaps the first thing I will do is report the cryptocurrency account to the FBI. According to spamcop.net, the message did originate on Russian servers. Am I a target of the Russian hacker army?

Costco is selling Levi’s 505 jeans for an excellent price. I will place an order shortly, but I am ambivalent because I don’t know if the jeans are made by poor graduate students at Columbia University or if the jeans are being sold by an outfit whose employees don’t know the country of Colombia. (See photo below.) Is this Costco’s way of passing off counterfeit Levi’s or just an oversight by an overburdened organization? This is a poor reflection on the employees raised in the digital age.

The Thomas Fire’s effects linger. In this photo, two trucks that are hauling mud and dirt from Montecito to the ocean pass each other on Linden Avenue in downtown Carpinteria on a beautiful, sleepy Sunday afternoon. Three weeks after the Montecito mud slides, an entire city may well still be in the process of being relegated to the ocean and posterity.

It is unclear whether the members of Kiss are investors in this endeavor or merely offering an endorsement for cash, but Rock and Brews is the singularly most annoying and cruel endeavor that either man has ever undertaken. The restaurant is situated next to gate 53B at LAX, whence my flight to Boston departs. The 80s hair rock and heavy metal music that is being blasted from this restaurant is so damn annoying that I had to escape the waiting area at the gate in order to compose this angry complaint. The members of Kiss–Gene Simmons in particular–are famous for an expansive history of misogyny and exploitation that stands unrivaled (if one believes their stories). Why on earth they would elect to annoy the hell out of tens of thousands of passengers who depart from the six nearby gates daily is testimony to their persistent sadism. They could have started a music school or a charity or a rehab program. Instead, they elected to blast some of the shittiest music ever recorded into the ears of hapless, trapped travelers. The real tragedy is that the overpriced beer will line their pockets in the end. It is hard to like the masochists who patronize this establishment. This nightmare of an eatery is the last thing one wants to endure after passing through the ordeals of getting to LAX and passing security.