It’s been another month of laying low and trying to set some things in motion. If this keeps up much longer this travel blog is in serious danger of turning into a non-travel blog.¹ Things are happening, glacially, but much of it is beyond my control and the parts that are within my control aren’t the most compelling reading. “I sat around, tried not to spend a lot of money, and thought about how I want to live for the next twenty years” isn’t gripping literature, even if it’s accurate.²

The good news is that I’m getting back to traveling a bit at the end of the year. I’m heading to Berlin for College of Wizardry³ and then stopping in Portugal before heading to New York for December. The bad news is that might be a temporary reprieve. I still need to find a job, which might require me to be more sedentary. I’ll also need to learn Portugese over the next year, which suggests I’ll need to take an immersive class⁴ and probably isn’t doable on the road.⁵ 2025 might end up being as slow as 2024 was.

There’s no point in writing a travelogue if you’re not traveling. And I think I always knew I wasn’t always going to be able to travel the way I started out. I’m not ready to wrap things up here yet, but if and when I do manage a plan for the next stage of my life it’s probably going to look a lot different than my current one does. And that means this blog is likely to look a lot different as well. I just wish I knew how.

One of the biggest problems I’m having figuring what comes next is the upcoming US election. I’m trying not to catastrophize. Even if worst comes to worst it’s probably not going to be as bad as we imagine. But as someone who left the country because they couldn’t stand what was happening in 2018, I’m well aware it would be much, much more of a disaster than the last time around, especially if you’re in one of the targeted groups.⁶ I’m doing what I can to prepare, just in case, but I’m only just figuring out what that looks like in a practical sense, far too late to be any immediate help to anybody.⁷

I won’t claim any particular insight into how the election’s going to turn out. I’m not even sure we’ll know on Wednesday.⁸ I’m cautiously optimistic based on all the initial signs, but anyone’s who’s sure it’s a lock in either direction is lying to you. I am convinced that the vast majority of the pundits don’t actually understand the probabilities they’re discussing. You’ll see almost everyone saying it’s a coin flip, basically a 50/50 chance of either side winning. I can almost guarantee that’s not the case, and the fact that everyone’s talking like it is is really starting to bug me.

If it were a 50/50 chance, then if you were to rerun the election 100 times you’d expect one side to win about 50 times. I don’t think that’s true at all. I highly suspect there’s a bias one way or the other in the electorate that’s not reflected in the polls, and the margins are close enough in enough swing states that even a small bias in one direction means if you were to rerun the election over and over you’d likely see the same result over and over. I just don’t think there’s really a lot of randomness left in the system.

Think of it this way: imagine I told you I woke up, flipped a coin, and wrote down the result on a piece of paper. If you were to guess the paper said “Heads” you’d be right half the time. But if I asked you to guess 100 times and you kept guessing “Heads” you wouldn’t be right 50 times. You’d either be right 100 times or wrong 100 times.

It’s a subtle distinction, but I find it at least somewhat comforting. We’re not waiting on a coin flip. Barring some truly bizarre last-minute revelation — and it’s hard to imagine something that would even move the needle at this point, given the last three months — things are pretty much going to play out however they’re gonna play out. We’re really only waiting to find out exactly what that is.

Next: Berlin (BER) to Lisbon (LIS)
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Footnotes

¹ I actually had a hotel I stayed at for three days slip a polite note under my door asking if I had died, since I had hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on my door when I arrived and never bothered to remove it. I just worked on my computer and ordered in delivery food.

² Okay, my last day in the UK I was in Portsmouth with a friend and spent a lovely Saturday on the Isle of Wight, visiting Osborne House for the second time and wandering through the charming sailing village of Cowes.

³ I’m crewing the 10^th anniversary game, rather than playing this time around.

⁴ Four hours a day for two months, give or take

⁵ There is an online version, but trying to manage trains and flights and hotels as well as the intense workload is probably too much.

⁶ Like “people who appreciate a functional democracy and the rule of law”

⁷ I expect rising illiberalism and authoritarianism is going to be a problem in the United States and beyond for the rest of my life, no matter how the upcoming election turns out, so it’s not like that work will go to waste.

⁸ The polls won’t even close in Pennsylvania until 2am my time, but it’s close enough in enough battleground states that we could be in for an anxious couple days, barring a surprise blowout in either direction.