I am an enormous Andy Weir fan – I think a long dinner 1:1 with him would be epicly fun.

While I usually run naked (I don’t listen to anything), I’ll occasionally add an audiobook during a marathon training period. During the summer training for the StVrain75Hygiene36 Berlin Proxy Marathon 2021  (a marathon I ran locally at the same time that my partners Seth and Ryan ran the Berlin marathon), I listened to Project Hail Mary.

Ryland Grace is a magnificent protagonist, but I love love love Rocky. And yes, plenty of stuff on the web about Eridianese and Eridian to English Translators .

F1 was fun, but this is going to be a fantastic movie. Bonus points: Ryan Gosling.

Amy and I have been sponsors of the Boulder International Film Festival for a while. We’ve also been helping fund documentaries and have received several executive producer credits . Two of these films are in the 2023 Boulder International Film Festival on March 2 – 5, 2023.

Afghan Dreamers is the story of an all-girls robotics team in Afghanistan who risks it all to prove that they can compete against anyone worldwide. Working in secret in a province under strong Taliban influence and the threat of violent retribution, the high-school-aged team members struggle in the face of immense odds and ever-present danger. They single-handedly begin to change perceptions in their entrenched Islamic culture. The film focuses on three team members – Fatemah, Somaya, and Lida – who become role models for the next generation.

I met David Cowan in 1988 when he was an undergraduate at Harvard and I was a graduate student at MIT. We became friends and regulars at Maven’s Deli in Harvard Square. Our first project was Feld Technologies reselling (not very successfully) a software product called DataRoute that David wrote for his father’s law firm. The phrase “Today is the day to route with DataRoute” still hangs out in the dark recesses of my memory.

David has produced several films and called me up when he started working on Afghan Dreamers . He knew I’d be an easy mark for joining in on the film based on my support of women and girls in computing. He did all the work, so I merely provided some money and moral support. I saw an early cut, but that was before the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which added some extreme plot twists to the story. Amnesty International gave the film the Best Human Rights Film Award for 2022 at the Galway premiere, and the Woodstock Film Festival gave it Honorary Mention for Best Documentary Feature.

I look forward to seeing the final cut at Boulder High School on Saturday, March 4th.

My Sister Liv is the story of two inseparable sisters, Tess and Liv. However, as Liv enters adolescence and struggles with the relentless pressures of social media, depression, body dysmorphia, and, often, suicidal thoughts, her big sister Tess desperately struggles to save her. My Sister Liv is a rare and riveting journey into Liv’s raw emotions and fears as a young life on the edge. As Tess and her family learn to cope after unthinkable loss, they begin the heartbreaking journey to understanding the circumstances that led to Liv’s death and talk to experts to provide hope and solutions for this ever-growing epidemic.

Three of our friends—Grant Besser, Melissa Grumhaus, and Jason Lynch—introduced or mentioned Olivia Ahnemann, one of the producers of My Sister Liv, to us. After some discussion, we also decided to provide financial support for this film. We will also be watching it for the first time at Boulder High School on Saturday, March 4th.

Amy and I will have a double feature day at the Boulder International Film Festival on March 4th. I hope to see you there.

I’ve co-founded or been an early investor in many things. One of my favorites is the MIT Banana Lounge. I will be hanging out there Tuesday afternoon and doing an AMA from 2pm to 4pm.

It began with an email from Zoe Sheill. I met Zoe at PSL when she was an intern the summer before her freshman year at MIT. We stayed in touch, and I went bananas when I got the following email from her on May 3rd, 2021.

… Right now, though, we’re running into a bit of trouble raising the money for starting the banana lounge again in the fall. In the past, we’ve given out about a quarter of a million bananas per semester, and about 76% of our budget is just bananas. The Undergraduate Association funded us in previous years – they are now using their limited money for newer projects now that the banana lounge has gotten a lot bigger (over 15k students would visit the lounge per week). Malte (the student that started the banana lounge 3 years ago), me, and Greg had a meeting a while ago and Greg recommended talking to you as a successful MIT alum and someone also excited about the possibilities with bananas.

After some back and forth, I agreed to provide the needed funding. Zoe responded with:

Our banana guy for 2021-22, I’m so excited! You are saving Banana Lounge. So many students will benefit from this and we are very much looking forward to sharing your story with them. I’m humbled by your generosity and the team is grateful and excited, thank you.

The MIT Banana Lounge has become a core part of the institution. Its fame began with a tweetstorm by Iain Cheeseman, a professor at the Whitehead Institute and the MIT Department of Biology.

Welcome to the inside story of the MIT Banana Lounge.

If you’re just tuning in, I learned about a fantastical room @MIT full of bananas. As an MIT faculty member + free food lover, it blew my mind. I recently met with the @MITBananaLounge team – amazing secrets now revealed! pic.twitter.com/p1DumFAP5Q

— Iain Cheeseman (@iaincheeseman) April 11, 2022

More fame followed with articles in Boston Magazine (The World Needs More Ideas Like the MIT Banana Lounge ) and the Boston Globe (At MIT’s ‘Banana Lounge,’ it’s not just the free food that’s a-peeling .) It appeared in Psychology Today (The Psychology of MIT’s Banana Lounge ). The MIT Class of ’62 hunted it down , and MIT President L. Rafael Reif spent about five minutes on it in his Charge to the Class of 2022.

I get an update from the team every few months. The stats so far for the 22-23 academic year (through January) follow:

• Bananas: 299,460 at 97.8% reliability and 0.53% waste
• Drinks: 36,240 cups
• Deliveries: 50

The complete 22-23 academic year plans include 600,000 bananas and 500,000 student visits.

After I provided the funding in 21-22, I was joined by Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy (co-founders of Harmonix) along with MIT Undergraduate Asociation and some students and recent alumni.

Because it’s MIT, I get graphs in my periodic updates.

I’ve moved on from sponsoring bathrooms, although I finally did get a bathroom sponsored at MIT. It’s top secret where it is, so don’t tell the MIT administration if you happen to find it.

Of all the business and technology writers out there, including bloggers, I think the best one, at this moment, is Matt Levine . He’s the only person currently writing on Planet Earth that I find myself reading every word of everything he writes.

For the last few months, he has been mostly writing about three topics:

• The Twitter Elon Musk Soap Opera
• Why (and How) Much of Crypto Is A Plain, Old, Ponzi Scheme
• Other Crazy and Fucked Up Things in Finance

For a flavor of his writing, read the following 11 chapters of Matt’s writing (listed in chronological order). Then, subscribe to his newsletter and get a magnificent medium-form article in your inbox every other day or so.

• Meme Stocks Were Too Good to Robinhood : Also Russian debt and crypto depositors.
• Don’t Cheat on the Ethics Exam : Also CoinFlex, Spirit and cheerleading for risk.
• Crypto Loves Its Shadow Banks : Also Archegos, CLOs and bond market liquidity.
• Say No to YES : Also 10b5-1 plans, crypto bailouts, Tether, MicroStrategy and ethics rules.
• Archegos Analyst Wants His Money Back : Also Russian assets, universal owners vs. labor and KYC/SOW.
• Voyager Has Some Tokens : Also vibes and Ben & Jerry’s.
• Nickel Big Shot Called the Shots : Also GameStop, SoftBank, Luna, Percent and index funds.
• Elon’s Out : Musk lost interest in pretending to buy Twitter.
• The Price of Not Buying Twitter : Also Twitter miscellanea, Celsius and Axie.
• I Was Told There’d Be a Cake Merger : Also a threatening letter, a toehold stock position, a venture-capital paper and a tweet from an undisclosed location.
• Twitter Still Wants Musk’s Money : Twitter sued Elon Musk for an outcome that no one wants.

Matt – thank you for making me snort or laugh out loud several times on the days you write.

My partner Ryan shared this with me. It’s a 10-minute video showing the evolution from System 0.97 to macOS 13 Ventura. I had an original Macintosh 128K which is now enjoying its retirement at the Media Archaeology Lab . Enjoy!

The only time I go outside right now is to go running. I had an awesome run in the dark at 5:30am today in 10 degrees. There were only two cars that passed me and one person near the end of my run walking his dog.

As Amy and I sit in our office in Aspen and grind away, we are blessed with a magical view.

A few moments ago, my EA Annie sent me a link to WindowSwap . It’s a treasure. I felt like hanging out in Ukraine for a bit, so off I went.

Each video is 10 minutes long with sounds, so on a big monitor, it feels pretty close to looking out the window.

On my run yesterday, I listened to Tim Ferriss interview Naval Ravikant on Happiness, Reducing Anxiety, Crypto Stablecoins, and Crypto Strategy .

I know both Tim and Naval . I have a mostly virtual relationship with each of them (I think I’ve been in the same physical space with Tim twice and never with Naval), but they are two people I’ve learned a lot from over the past decade.

When I run, I listen to one of four things.

• Nothing
• Podcasts
• Audible Books (mostly science fiction)
• Music, but generally my long time standards (Pink Floyd, Boston, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rush)

I go through phases, and I’m in a Podcast / Audible phase. I’m a little bored of Diamond Age (I’m halfway through in a slow spot), so I fired up a random Tim Ferriss podcast. I noticed he’d done one recently with Naval, so that was it.

The crypto stuff was good, but I was much more intrigued by everything else. I’m a big fan of Richard Feynman , so when Naval started rolling out Feynman quotes, he had me. There was a ton of wonderful in the back and forth between Tim and Naval, and when Naval got on a roll on a topic, the running just vanished into the background.

A fun sleeper idea in the middle of things was that Naval, who has over a million followers, doesn’t follow anyone on Twitter. I only use Twitter to broadcast things these days, so I think I’ll try that hack for a while and see if it works.

I haven’t been blogging much lately – on purpose. I’ve been trying to reset a few things in my writing and decided to go inward for a few months, starting around my birthday. I believe the reset has happened and listening to Naval and Tim helped reinforce a few things I’ve been playing around with now that I’m 55 years old.

Tim / Naval – thanks. I enjoyed listening to y’all.

Last week I participated in a virtual tour of the Media Archaeology Lab . Amy and I are financial supporters, I gave them my vintage computer collection several years ago, and we’ve underwritten their acquisition of several collections. I believe the Media Archaeology Lab is now one of the largest collections of working vintage computers.

“Working” is an important part of the phrase. The team at the Media Archaeology Lab , including Dr. Lori Emerson and Dr. libi rose striegl are magicians who, along with many student volunteers, loving take care of, well, everything.

When most people who had an Apple ][ or Apple //e think of Zoom, they think of Zoom Telephonics or WGBH-TV’s Zoom.

When I saw bpNichol’s Computer Poems streaming on Zoom, I responded with, “Holy shit, this is awesome.” Yeah, that wasn’t very poetic of me.

Lori Emerson and an Apple //e being streamed by Zoom

A few minutes later, we saw Super Mario Bros. running on a Commodore 64. We talked about the history of Nintendo not liking this and their subsequent DMCA takedown notice. Some companies have no sense of nostalgia.

Here’s how you stream from an Apple //e to Zoom.

• The Apple //e has an RCA jack for the monitor, so all you need to stream is an RCA cable and an AV to USB adapter.
• Run the RCA cable from the Apple to the converter.
• Plug the USB into your computer.
• When you open your preferred video streaming software (Zoom, OBS, Twitch), the converter will show up as one of your camera options. 
• Audio with the Apple //e is a little more complicated. You need an upgrade to the sound card, such as a ReActiveMicro Mockingboard v2.2 , to get an audio line out. The Mockingboard has a 3.5mm audio jack, so you need a 3.5mm – RCA splitter from that to the AV converter.

Here’s how you stream from a Commodore 64 to Zoom

• The Commodore 64 has an RF jack on the back that carries both image and sound, requiring something that can convert that signal to split audio and video channels.
• A VCR is faster, easier, and more reliable than any other converter, but you can also use an RF modulator.
• The RF cable runs from the back of the Commodore to the Coax-IN on the VCR via an RF-Coax converter.
• Then connect RCA cables from the AV-OUT on the VCR to the AV-USB converter.
• As with an Apple, when it is all set, the AV-USB converter shows up as a camera in your camera menu on any streaming software

If you want to see the full poem by bpNichol, here it is on Youtube.

If this is interesting to you, please consider making a cash donation to support the Media Archaeology Lab ‘s operations. If you have vintage computers you’d like to donate, drop me an email .

If you can’t imagine that a drama about chess would be riveting, you need to watch The Queen’s Gambit . And, if you love (or even like) chess, start watching it tonight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDrieqwSdgI

The first two episodes are the Opening. The Middlegame happens in episodes 3, 4, and 5. The Endgame is episodes 6 and 7. Each is delicious. The Endgame is spectacular.

We watched it in three nights. Last night was episode 5, 6, and 7. We normally would have gone to bed after episode 6, but we played through rather than taking an adjournment.

So wonderful. Thanks Netflix for the distraction from everything else.

Here’s a simple one to make your 10 hours a day on Zoom more enjoyable.

Hide Self View

Click on the three little dots next to Mute in your video window. Choose “Hide Self View.”

The following view …

is much better to look at that the one with my own picture in it.

Staring at yourself for 10 hours a day is exhausting. If you are having trouble relating to this, put a mirror on your desk in front of you and look at it all day. That’s basically what you are doing when you don’t hide self view.

For some crazy reason, Zoom hasn’t made this a default feature yet (Dear Zoom, make it a default to Hide Self View).

I started doing this about a month ago. It has blown my mind how less tiring the day of endless Zoom is and how easier it is to concentrate when I’m not constantly looking at my face on the screen.

Amy and I driving to dinner with Ben Einstein and Grace Livingston a few months ago. Amy generally dislikes podcasts so she was annoyed with me as I fiddled with my iPhone and Carplay which kept opening my podcast app.

Ben said, “Have you listened to The Anthropocene Reviewed ?”

I responded, “The what what?”

Amy said, “Put some music on.”

Ben tried again. “Put on The Anthropocene Reviewed Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Stickers and the Indianapolis 500 .”

15 minutes later Amy said, “Not bad” and I was hooked.

Several of my favorites have been Notes App and Sports Rivalries, Hot Dog Eating Contest and Chemotherapy, Gray Aliens and Rock Paper Scissors, and Teddy Bears and Penalty Shootouts.

If you are looking for a new podcast, give The Anthropocene Reviewed a try.

Why doesn’t Amazon acquire Starbucks?

Starbucks has one thing Amazon doesn’t have – over 30,000 physical locations. Sure, Amazon owns Whole Foods, which has about 350 physical locations, but they are large food distribution facilities (e.g. grocery stores) rather than community meeting spaces (e.g. coffee shops).

Amazon’s market cap is $930b. Starbucks’ market cap is $104b. That’s roughly a 90% / 10% merger assuming no premium for Starbucks. Even with a huge premium, it’s still less than an 85% / 15% split.

Oh, and they are both headquartered in Seattle.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the primary retail point of presence in the US suddenly became Amabucks?

I’m sure there’s a massive analysis of this somewhere in a corp dev department at Amazon or at investment banks pitching Amazon on the deal.

I’m trying to decide if I like the name Starmazon better.

Amy and I went to see Uncut Gems last night. It was a gem of a movie.

Adam Sandler was magnificent. My inner 14 year old loves his puerile movies and when I read the New York Times Magazine article Adam Sandler’s Everlasting Shtick around Thanksgiving I knew I had to see this movie.

Amy and I had a calm sushi dinner at our favorite place in Longmont, went to Staples and bought some office supplies, and then settled into the theater for 30 minutes of previews. We sort of knew what we were getting into, so we thought we were ready.

About an hour into the movie I realized I was holding my breath. I looked over at Amy and she was gripping the chair. I looked around the theater and saw what appeared to be a bunch of people in various stages of rictus.

About fifteen minutes later I realized I was touching my fingernails and glasses over and over again in one of my old OCD rhythms.

If you’ve ever been out of control going downhill on skis or a bike, that’s what the movie felt like. For over two hours.

The ending was completely and totally unexpected.

And then we were out in the parking lot, in the cold Colorado December pre-snow night, walking to our car. Stunned silent.

I know some people who say they are never anxious. I know others who are anxious all the time. And many others who don’t acknowledge their anxiety.

Anxiety is a thing I’ve struggled with my entire life. I’ve learned how to manage it, and how to take care of myself so it doesn’t rise up on a regular basis. But soaking in it for over two hours was intense and it’s still echoing for me this morning.

We had our share of wildlife in Aspen. By mid-summer, this sign was on the road near our house. And, below is the mama bear that came and visited me almost every day in August.

It took all of my self-discipline to stay inside the house as every instinct I had was to go outside and play with it. Bears are my friend.

Rhinos, on the other hand, scare the shit out of me.

if you mess with the thicc unicorn you get the horn.

that’s the law. pic.twitter.com/BjKZqS0jBy

— The Warax. 🦛💨 (@iAmTheWarax) August 30, 2019

While an impossible mission, he would complete America.

I love weird Internet memes.

Recently, I plumbed the depths of this one with my friend Quinn. Go to your Google browser and type “did ab” and see what comes up for you.

If it’s “Did Abraham Lincoln Invent Pancakes” then the Internet is working as expected.

Of course, our next move was to go see if there was a website at https://didabrahamlincolninventpancakes.com/ . A week ago there wasn’t, but there is one there now. Bwahahahahahahaha.

Did Abraham Lincoln Invent Pancakes? is now a permanent part of the web. I wonder what Google is going to do with it now?

When I wrote the post Every Lie We Tell Incurs a Debt to the Truth I expected to get some feedback. I got more than I usually do (mostly by email vs. blog comments) and much of it was thoughtful.

One person pointed to the video I embedded, which I thought was great. It’s an extensive explanation of things in HBO’s Chernobyl that were either simply wrong or exaggerated. The video is entertaining as well as substantive, so it’s a good addition to the content from the show.

Separately, I listened to The Chernobyl Podcast on my drive up to Aspen about two weeks ago. If you watched the HBO Chernobyl docudrama, the accompanying podcast is a must listen. Peter Sagal (host of NPR’s “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!) interviews Craig Mazin (Chernobyl Series Creator and Executive Producer.) Peter is an awesome host and he pulls out a ton of interesting, useful, and curious information from Craig.

Next up for me is reading Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster which is near the top of my pile of infinite books to read (right after I finish Black Crouch’s Recursion .)

Every year, one of my favorite things to read is the Berkshire Hathaway annual letter . The 2018 version is out and, as always, is a beautiful thing to read if you have any interest in business and economics.

I particularly loved Warren Buffett’s reflections at the end of the letter in a section called The American Tailwind, which follows:

On March 11th, it will be 77 years since I first invested in an American business. The year was 1942, I was 11, and I went all in, investing $114.75 I had begun accumulating at age six. What I bought was three shares of Cities Service preferred stock. I had become a capitalist, and it felt good.

Let’s now travel back through the two 77-year periods that preceded my purchase. That leaves us starting in 1788, a year prior to George Washington’s installation as our first president. Could anyone then have imagined what their new country would accomplish in only three 77-year lifetimes?

During the two 77-year periods prior to 1942, the United States had grown from four million people – about 1⁄2 of 1% of the world’s population – into the most powerful country on earth. In that spring of 1942, though, it faced a crisis: The U.S. and its allies were suffering heavy losses in a war that we had entered only three months earlier. Bad news arrived daily.

Despite the alarming headlines, almost all Americans believed on that March 11th that the war would be won. Nor was their optimism limited to that victory. Leaving aside congenital pessimists, Americans believed that their children and generations beyond would live far better lives than they themselves had led.

The nation’s citizens understood, of course, that the road ahead would not be a smooth ride. It never had been. Early in its history our country was tested by a Civil War that killed 4% of all American males and led President Lincoln to openly ponder whether “a nation so conceived and so dedicated could long endure.” In the 1930s, America suffered through the Great Depression, a punishing period of massive unemployment.

Nevertheless, in 1942, when I made my purchase, the nation expected post-war growth, a belief that proved to be well-founded. In fact, the nation’s achievements can best be described as breathtaking.

Let’s put numbers to that claim: If my $114.75 had been invested in a no-fee S&P 500 index fund, and all dividends had been reinvested, my stake would have grown to be worth (pre-taxes) $606,811 on January 31, 2019 (the latest data available before the printing of this letter). That is a gain of 5,288 for 1. Meanwhile, a $1 million investment by a tax-free institution of that time – say, a pension fund or college endowment – would have grown to about $5.3 billion.

Let me add one additional calculation that I believe will shock you: If that hypothetical institution had paid only 1% of assets annually to various “helpers,” such as investment managers and consultants, its gain would have been cut in half, to $2.65 billion. That’s what happens over 77 years when the 11.8% annual return actually achieved by the S&P 500 is recalculated at a 10.8% rate.

Those who regularly preach doom because of government budget deficits (as I regularly did myself for many years) might note that our country’s national debt has increased roughly 400-fold during the last of my 77-year periods. That’s 40,000%! Suppose you had foreseen this increase and panicked at the prospect of runaway deficits and a worthless currency. To “protect” yourself, you might have eschewed stocks and opted instead to buy 31⁄4 ounces of gold with your $114.75.

And what would that supposed protection have delivered? You would now have an asset worth about $4,200, less than 1% of what would have been realized from a simple unmanaged investment in American business. The magical metal was no match for the American mettle.

Our country’s almost unbelievable prosperity has been gained in a bipartisan manner. Since 1942, we have had seven Republican presidents and seven Democrats. In the years they served, the country contended at various times with a long period of viral inflation, a 21% prime rate, several controversial and costly wars, the resignation of a president, a pervasive collapse in home values, a paralyzing financial panic and a host of other problems. All engendered scary headlines; all are now history.

Christopher Wren, architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral, lies buried within that London church. Near his tomb are posted these words of description (translated from Latin): “If you would seek my monument, look around you.” Those skeptical of America’s economic playbook should heed his message.

In 1788 – to go back to our starting point – there really wasn’t much here except for a small band of ambitious people and an embryonic governing framework aimed at turning their dreams into reality. Today, the Federal Reserve estimates our household wealth at $108 trillion, an amount almost impossible to comprehend.

Remember, earlier in this letter, how I described retained earnings as having been the key to Berkshire’s prosperity? So it has been with America. In the nation’s accounting, the comparable item is labeled “savings.” And save we have. If our forefathers had instead consumed all they produced, there would have been no investment, no productivity gains and no leap in living standards.

It’s 2018. I’m still an incredibly heavy email user. It’s the primary tool in my workflow and has been since the early 1990s. I’ve tried a lot of different things over the years, but always come back to email.

I’ve been a Gmail user for almost a decade. While I’ve tried client-side apps, Gmail in Chrome has been the only thing that has stuck for me. I’ve also tried many of the iOS email apps and always end up back at Gmail for iOS.

Until now.

An increasing number of people in my world have been using Superhuman  so I decided to give it a try. I was skeptical that it would capture my attention beyond a day. Two weeks later it is, in fact, superhuman. I’m using the Chrome app and the iOS app as my primary email clients.

The other tools I have in my email workflow are SaneBox , Todoist , Notebene (which recently replaced Captio), and FullContact. As a result of Superhuman, I eliminated TextExpander from the mix. The one limitation of Superhuman that causes me a little pain is lack of direct integration with FullContact, which would make managing my address book better.

I didn’t realize how sluggish Gmail on Chrome is, even on a 225Mbps connection (which is what my office is clocking in at this morning.) And, at home, where I often see 3Mbps at high peak usage times, it’s a dream. But, that’s a tiny part of the speed. The big change is that I keep my hands on the keyboard 100% of the time. While I’ve been a heavy Gmail keyboard user, it turns out that you need the mouse for a bunch of Gmail things. Superhuman has turned them all into either keyboard commands, a slightly different workflow, or a “snippet” that lets you create your own compound shortcuts.

I never thought I’d recommend a web-based email client that costs $30 / month, but Superhuman is worth every penny of it. I wish I was an investor, but I guess I’ll live with being a Superhuman user.

As the weekend approaches, I sense the need in the universe for some people to find a new TV show to binge watch.

If you fit in this category and haven’t yet watched The Expanse, give it a try. If you are a BSG fan and haven’t seen it yet, start tonight. If you like sci-fi, drama, space opera, global political intrigue, underdogs, detective noir, the risk of mass extinction, and believable human history a few hundred years in the future, this one is for you.

There’s a ton of setup, so you need to hang in there for the first five or so episodes. As the friend who referred me to it stated, it’s “Boring boring PROTOMOLECULE…” You get there quickly enough.

There are three seasons, and Amazon just picked up the fourth, so there is a lot to catch up on along with a future. And, after reflecting on it compared to our current geopolitical situation, it’s easy to assert that “nothing ever changes.”