Why the Philippines Has Lots of Guns But Few Mass Shootings

For now, however, hiyâ means you cannot “just start shooting people,” Narag says. “Because if that happens, you know the community won’t support you.”

As a Filipino American, this absolutely makes sense. The concept of “hiya” or shame or embarrassment, is strong in our culture. Contrasting that idea to American culture, especially American gun culture, it feels like the idea of shame or embarrassment does not exist.

The 2022 Mazda MX-30 misses the market, but does it matter?

We reported before that Mazda made the MX-30 slower “to feel more like a gas car.” Throughout the drive, we did not find acceleration and power delivery to be particularly inspiring. Mazda told us that its reason is that EVs with instant torque can be too “herky-jerky,” which can ruin the passenger experience. So Mazda muted the “jerkiness” of acceleration to follow the same curve as an ICE car.

This is absolutely baffling. The instant torque is one of the benefits of owning an electric vehicle.

Dad Things – Issue #28

Every year, former Wired editor Kevin Kelly comes up with a list of bits advice he wish he had known. This year he has 103 bits of advice. Here are my favorites.

  • There is no such thing as being “on time.” You are either late or you are early. Your choice.
  • Ask anyone you admire: Their lucky breaks happened on a detour from their main goal. So embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone.
  • You’ll get 10x better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior, especially in children and animals.
  • You will be judged on how well you treat those who can do nothing for you.
  • Your time and space are limited. Remove, give away, throw out things in your life that dont spark joy any longer in order to make room for those that do.
  • Aim to die broke. Give to your beneficiaries before you die; it’s more fun and useful. Spend it all. Your last check should go to the funeral home and it should bounce.
  • To keep young kids behaving on a car road trip, have a bag of their favorite candy and throw a piece out the window each time they misbehave.
  • You can read the rest here and subscribe here.

A Good Problem to Have

This post originally appeared as an issue on my newsletter. If you’d like to get early access to my posts, please consider subscribing.

I have to get my Tesla repaired.

Let me back up.

I got a Tesla Model 3 in December. I’ve had it on order since October and I’ve been wanting one ever since they came out in 2017(?). I took delivery on 12/19 and it’s everything I wanted and I’m completely happy with it.

For NYE, we visited my in laws. It was a delayed Christmas celebration combined with a NYE celebration. They live in a suburban community in Orange County. Whenever we visit them, I always park on the street. It’s the type of neighborhood where kids play on the street all the time. No crazy city traffic or anything like that. Except on this day, a group of kids on their bikes were chasing each other through the neighborhood, one of them lost control and slammed into the bumper of my car. One of the parents came out and alerted us to what happened. We figured out who lost control and their parents offered to pay for the repair. Rightfully so.

But three weeks into having my new car, I had to find a few body shops to get a few quotes to send to the parents so they can decide if they want to pay out of pocket or go through insurance.

The moment I saw the scratch, I knew it wasn’t going to be easily buffed out. But it was also big enough that I couldn’t let it go unrepaired. I knew the hassle and time it was going to take to find shops, get quotes, and then ultimately get the repair done. But I also knew “getting the scratch repaired on my brand new Tesla” is very much a first world problem and is not the worst thing in the world by a long shot.
I caught myself saying “I have to get my Tesla repaired” and realized how lucky I was to even be in that situation. I could have thrown a fit but I took a step back and realized in the grand scheme of things, things could be a lot worse.

I’ve had to have this mindset for the majority of the pandemic. “We’re all safe and healthy”, “We’re all vaccinated”, “We have a place to live and food to eat” were all things I had to tell myself when the variants would come and go and the end of the pandemic was nowhere in sight. Which ultimately is a good skill to have. Not just during this pandemic, but for life in general.