Bites of February — Minor reflections
“Bites of February at the tail end of March?” Well yes. The fact I am talking about it in March doesn’t mean it didn’t happen in February no?
Anyway, I come bearing good tidings. I found a place 🎉!!!! You must remember my article about the wild wild west that is the Toronto rental market. Well I survived 🥹🥹.
I got this nice one-bed in a relatively quiet neighborhood right across a park. It came furnished, within my budget (ish) and I have this lovely lady that is the landlord. Oh and I didn’t have to give out 10 post-dated checks to get it. We finalized the process in time for a move-in date of March 1st. I am so excited. Arghhh!! 🤓🤓
Book of the Month — Pachinko
“Ape” — To imitate the behavior or manner of (someone or something), especially in an absurd or unthinking way.
I probably have to read more often but the first time I had seen the word ‘ape’ used in this context was in this book. Pachinko uses that word in a sentence to indicate how ludicrous it was that people claimed they could tell Koreans apart from the Japanese when in reality it was possible for a Korean to be completely indistinguishable from a Japanese person by just putting on this sort of mask.
The book follows the fictional journey of 4 generations of a Korean immigrant family in 20th century Japan. I have seen clips of the Apple TV show inspired by this book and it’s always piqued my interest. However, I don’t have Apple TV because I already have Prime and Disney and we all live with finite resources — obviously. So I went to my trusty old friend, the library. BTW, if you don’t have a library card and a Libby account, what are you doing 😒???
Anyway, the story starts off a little slow with the life of this crippled fisherman and his wife and their beloved only surviving daughter. It picks up the pace following a whirlwind romance of this daughter with a mysterious wealthy stranger that eventually leads to a pregnancy and the discovery that the stranger was an up-to-no-good philandering married man. She rejects his offer to be ‘his wife in Korea’, marries a kind hearted sickly minister who accepts her and her baby and eventually becomes the matriarch of the family.
There are a lot of notes to be taken from this book but one thing that will always stand out to me was how Sunja — the matriarch — stood firm in her conviction not to accept the side-chick offer from the get-go. She might have been a naive little girl who had fallen for the sweet words of a goodlooking wealth man — I mean who wouldn’t — but once she knew what she knew, she made a decision, a brave one. One that she stuck with for the most part of her life even when she faltered in some moments of weakness.
Can you really separate the 'work' from the 'person’?
If you’ve been around me long enough and we get to the stage where we’re discussing music, you’ll know that I don’t have a particular genre I listen to. I listen to almost anything — RnB, Pop, hip-hop, some country and definitely afrobeats.
However, the one thing you’ll definitely hear me talk about is how I would not out of principle listen to a certain Nigerian artiste. I do not go out of my way to play any of his music. I would not be adding to his stream numbers knowingly. I refuse to name this musician in this article for several reasons the main of them being I do not want to give him any attention in my space because of his crude, brash, arrogant and destructive personality.
When I mention this to people, the response is usually ‘but it’s not like the other Nigerian musicians are such good people’. Technically that is correct. However for this particular person, there is an inherent personality flaw that I cannot in good conscience tolerate or excuse in the name of separating the art from the artist.
In February one of the podcast episodes, I listened to talked about this in the context of the programming and software development world. In his podcast episode called ReiserFS — The Art and the Artist problem, Adam talks about Hans Reiser of ReiserFS. Hans is a technically brilliant person who wanted to change the world of file systems but unfortunately had some deeply entrenched personality flaws.
It started off small with him not understanding that the Open Computing Facility, the OCF — a student run group — he was a part of was meant to be a collaborative space, a community. He liked a one-man show and didn’t care whose toes he stepped on to get it.
As he moved through the different stages of life, it manifested in different ways in his work life and personal life. He is quoted as saying “The average kernel developer is not particularly bright.” These were the words coming out of the mouth of someone who was supposedly building something for this community that had adopted his supposedly brilliant file system. He was dismissive, arrogant, had a gigantic messianic complex and totally unreceptive to input or feedback — all traits similar to that of the Nigerian artiste I mentioned.
On the home front, things were equally as terrible. There was a difference of opinion on how to raise their kids and he was lashing out — unyielding and unwilling to make any compromise. He’s erratic, almost neurotic and Nina, his wife is concerned with good reason as they went through a custody battle. He even went as far as blaming his wife for his failings.
It’s not to anyone’s surprise then that he was charged with the murder of his wife a year later after her sudden disappearance. It was this same personality flaw that caused him to crumble under the weight of diligent cross-examination.
A few things I found bone-chilling were the discovery of the murder books he bought, how dismissive he was about it and how unremorseful he was about everything. There was no doubt it was premeditated murder and he tried to treat it as trivial.
What is the take away from this? You cannot in good conscience rationalize a lack of empathy just because a person is supposedly great at their work. As Adam said, they’re all tied up together. The person makes the art. Without the person, there is no art.
When it comes to the software development landscape and tech at large, I think we all need to be a little more mindful of that because that is how we ended up with the different you-know-whos running around wrecking havoc right now.
Understand the people, and their motivations. Because, in the end, it’s all connected. — Adam Gordon Bell.
If you’d like to listen to this episode, I have linked it below. There are some little technical bits here and there but I think Adam does a great job of dumbing it down so that almost everyone can enjoy the episode. His podcast Corecursive is totally one of my favorite podcasts.
That will be all for this issue of this journal entry style article. Till the next one! XOXO 💕💕💕
Listen to the podcast episode: ReiserFS And The Art And Artist Problem
