Evan X. Merz

I recently stumbled across one of the strangest things I have ever seen on social media, and I need to talk about it. I'm just going to embed it here because I think you need to see it in order to understand where I'm coming from.

First of all, the craziest thing about this video is that it doesn't immediately strike you (or me) as odd. It seems like it's within the range of normal cures peddled by social media health gurus.

But take a moment to think about what you just saw. You saw a man presenting himself as Amish, in a fully produced social media video, petting a shirtless fat man's belly, and boiling a homemade health remedy.

And if you're anything like me, you kind of believed him. After watching this video, I had a moment where I wondered if this is really what I should be doing. I had a moment where I legitimately thought that this Amish influencer really had some secret insight into health that I didn't understand.

His gimmick works because he's playing on your media and history literacy in a really canny way. You see the beard and the straw hat, and you assume that this is an Amish man. As such, you assume that he lives apart from most of society, and that by living apart, he has some special wisdom or insight into life that is beyond those of us who grew up in the suburbs.

He is presenting himself as an ascetic, and the idea that ascetics have some wisdom to offer normies like us is nothing new. Here's what wikipedia has to say about asceticism.

Asceticism is a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from worldly pleasures through self-discipline, self-imposed poverty, and simple living, often for the purpose of pursuing spiritual goals. Ascetics may withdraw from the world or continue to be part of their society, but typically adopt a frugal lifestyle, characterized by the renunciation of material possessions and physical pleasures, and also spend time fasting while concentrating on religion, prayer, or meditation.

Because of the way he presents himself, we see him as an ascetic from whom we can learn. Because of his appearance, we give him authenticity, and grant his advice some additional weight.

But we shouldn't. He's just another social media scammer.

WebMd will tell you that there is little evidence behind the cinnamon cure he is peddling.

Cinnamon does have antioxidant, antibiotic, and anti-inflammatory properties, but more research is needed to confirm these benefits before health care practitioners recommend cinnamon as a treatment... there is no evidence that merely eating or taking cinnamon can treat cancer.

Additionally, you should question the value of his asceticism. Being an ascetic on social media is extremely ironic. How can he really be living a simple life of poverty when he is recording fully produced videos for social media?

This type of asceticism is performative by nature. If he wasn't performing in the public square, then we wouldn't know about him. He performs in the public square because he wants the attention. His form of asceticism has a lot of crossover with attention seeking behavior.

So don't take his advice. He's not real or authentic. He's just another person who thinks that you should listen to him.

Pine trees are dinosaurs. They were born alongside the dinosaurs in the distant eddies of lost time that we call The Jurassic. Their story is epic and unknowable. All we can say about their history for sure, is that they somehow managed to find a way to survive on every continent except Antarctica. They are supreme pragmatists, doing what they must to adapt to any climate and any situation. No matter how much damage humanity does to this planet, the pines will inevitably adapt and survive us.

Yet, even within this resilient genus, Pinus taeda, the Loblolly Pine, distinguishes itself as the king of tenacity, and a quiet titan of the American landscape.

Loblolly is not a word that is heard much in modern English. It’s an antiquated term for a mud hole or a swamp, and that’s the natural setting for Loblolly Pines. Loblolly Pines prefer to grow in the waterlogged, acidic soils of the American South where other species may struggle. Far from being a niche specialist, however, this tolerance for swampy ground has allowed the Loblolly Pine to become the second most common tree in the United States. It drapes the southern states in a vast, evergreen blanket, a testament to its adaptive genius. It is a generalist in the best sense, a tree that saw opportunity in the muck and claimed an empire.

What makes the Loblolly Pine truly fascinating is the duality of its nature: it is both a rugged survivor and a vigorous grower. In the wild, it is a pioneer species, often one of the first trees to recolonize disturbed land, its thick bark providing a defense against the periodic fires that sweep through southern ecosystems. It holds its ground with a quiet defiance. Yet, this same tree is the backbone of the southern timber industry precisely because it is anything but quiet when growing. Shooting upwards at an average of two feet per year, its ambition is relentless. This rapid growth, paired with its straight trunk and strong wood, makes it an ideal tree for the lumber industry.

The Loblolly Pine’s genetic story is also one of epic proportions. In 2014, it became one of the first species to have its entire genome sequenced. Its genome is roughly seven times the size of a human’s, and it held the record for the longest discovered genome until 2018. This vast genetic toolkit is a reflection of its long evolutionary journey, providing the raw material for its remarkable adaptability. It is a living chronicle of survival, a complex script that allows it to be both an ancient relic and a modern workhorse.

The Loblolly Pine is more than just a tree; it is a symbol of persistence, a quiet engine of economy, and a deep-rooted piece of the American story, written in needles, bark, and an unyielding will to grow.

TLDR: Here's the guide to things you can see in my garden!

This year I really committed to native plants. I pulled out nearly all of the non-native plants in my front yard. The only three non-native plants that remain are a Japanese Maple that the prior owner planted, a strawberry fruit tree that I planted when I first moved in, and some aeoniums that I use to shade the hottest part of the yard.

So I decided to submit my garden to the local native plants garden tour, The Growing Natives Garden Tour. I was excited to be accepted into the tour, and I used it to motivate me to spend a little more time planning and tending to my native garden this year.

That inspired me to redesign sections of the yard. I hunted down some beautiful hollow logs to act as tunnels for lizards and little critters. I added several more boulders and planted groups of native verbena and aster around them. I also moved some plants around in favor of aesthetics, which is not something I did in past years.

I made this little guide to what can be seen in my garden on the tour this year. I hope you will stop by on Saturday, March 18th, between 10am and 4pm.

For more updates from my garden, follow Evan's California Garden on Facebook.

After The Second World War, Dwight D. Eisenhower was the most popular man in the world. He had been the Supreme Commander of the allied forces in Europe, and in that role he led the D-Day invasion that brought down Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

As such, he was immediately thronged with calls to run for President of the United States, but he didn't want to be president. He didn't like politics, he didn't like fundraising, and he didn't like public speaking. Here's how Stephen E. Ambrose described the situation.

Daily, in one form or another, he was asked, "Don't you want to be President?" He emphatically denied it, in his private conversations with his family, the gang, his other intimate friends; he denied it in his private diary; he denied it in his correspondence; he denied it in every public utterance he made on the subject. There is not a single item in the massive collection at the Eisenhower Library prior to late 1951 that even hints that he would seek the job or that he was secretly doing so.

That situation continued unabated from 1945 until 1952, when Dwight and Mamie were living in Paris as part of Eisenhower's work for NATO. While in Paris, all of Ike's friends flew in from the states to convince him to run, but none of them were successful.

Until Jacqueline Cochran stepped in.

His friends and the politicians kept telling him how much the American people yearned for his leadership, and on February 11, he got a dramatic demonstration of how right they were. Jacqueline Cochran, the famous aviator... flew to Paris with a two-hour film of an Eisenhower rally in Madison Square Garden, held at midnight following a boxing match... Some fifteen thousand people attended, despite - according to Cochran - a total lack of cooperation from the city officials... The film showed the crowd chanting in unison, "We want Ike! We want Ike!" while waving "I like Ike" banners and placards. Eisenhower and Mamie watched in their living room and were profoundly moved.

When the film was over, Eisenhower got Cochran a drink. As they raised their glasses, she blurted out a toast: "To the President." She later recalled, "I was the first person to ever say this to him and he burst into tears... Tears were just running out of his eyes, he was so overwhelmed...So then he started to talk about his mother, his father and his family, but mostly his mother, and he talked for an hour."

So who was this woman who changed history with a short film?

It turns out, she was a pretty incredible person. She came from a poor family in the Florida panhandle, and became the leader of the women's air force in the second world war. After the war, she became the first woman to break the sound barrier. When she died, she held more flight records than any other pilot.

You won't regret reading her wikipedia entry.

I'm sitting here in Silicon Valley riding the AI hype cycle like everyone else. On one hand, it feels like something new and different. On the other hand, it kind of feels like we've been here before.

I was born in 1981, so I'm old enough to remember the boom-and-bust of the dotcom bubble. In the late 1990s, tech companies really convinced us that we were going to be doing everything online in no time at all. Obvious things were moving online, like encyclopedias and restaurant reviews, but they really tried to sell us on a bunch of products that nobody needed, and few people even wanted.

It's really easy to look back and mock defunct services like CueCat, which was essentially the 90s version of a QR code.

But, unlike some other tech products that have received mountains of investor cash, the only real problem with CueCat was that it was ahead of its time. People do legitimately need to shop for things. Maybe they don't need to fill their homes with the plastic crap that just ends up in the landfill, but they do need to shop on some level.

The dotcom bubble burst in the early 2000s, but it was followed by wave after wave of questionable tech "innovation."

The weirdest tech bubble was easily cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a technology that allows people to buy things without actually transferring paper money or coins. It's very similar to a credit or debit card, except that the currency isn't backed by a government like the United States, and the accounts aren't stored in banks, but in a common ledger called the block chain. It's a payment technology that is just complex enough to confuse and inspire people who don't understand it. The actual value of cryptocurrency technology seems limited almost entirely to criminals who need to transact outside of government watchdogs, and to confidence tricksters who want to run a pump-and-dump scam with a meme coin.

The AI bubble emerged just as it became clear that cryptocurrency wasn't going to become a widely adopted technology. The long term value of AI is also very unclear. It might be critical to all business in the future, as cryptocurrency claimed to be, on the other hand it might end up being a niche technology that most people don't actually need.

It's already clear that most people don't actually want AI and even business leaders with egos larger than their bank balances don't actually need it.

But the emergence of these recent tech bubbles has caused me to reflect on all the tech we've adopted in my lifetime. I've started to wonder, do I really need any of this? Maybe this question seems obvious to you, but given the obviously scammy nature of the cryptocurrency grift, I'm wondering if scamming has always been integral to the tech game.

Are cell phones a scam? Are smart phones a scam? Are apps a scam? Are websites a scam? Are computers a scam? Is the combustion engine a scam? For each of these technologies, there is an element of a pyramid scheme. The more people who buy into these technologies, the more valuable they become. For instance, cars wouldn't be so valuable if all of us didn't agree that we should be spending our tax dollars on roads. Every new technology claims to solve problems, but it's increasingly unclear that they don't create as many problems as they solve.

And that brings me to the nominal topic of this post, Steve Jobs.

I don't have much to say about Steve Jobs that hasn't already been said. He is often praised as a visionary leader and tech genius. The Netflix science fiction show Pantheon is even loosely based on the idea of him resurrecting himself to create the singularity through his tech genius. But if all this tech is just layers of stuff that we don't really need, what did Steve Jobs really do when he sold us all smart phones?

More and more he just looks like a confidence man standing on stage and selling us magical health elixirs that will cure all the problems that ail us. His main achievement was getting us to pay huge sums of money for something that we didn't need. More and more he just looks like another salesperson huckster in the same vein as PT Barnum or Donald Trump. He was just chasing the holy dollar in the only way he knew how.

He was just a twenty first century huckster in the right place at the right time.

But this post isn't really about Steve Jobs, it's about the tech he sold us, and all the tech hype cycles we have survived. After all, if you can see through the hype cycle for cryptocurrency, and you can see through the hype cycle for AI, shouldn't you question the still-ongoing hype cycle for the smart phone?