It’s been nearly two years since I’ve been the United States. It’s changed. I’ve spent the last week staying with a friend in New York City, and the city isn’t the same one I knew when I left. That’s a trite thing to say — New York’s notorious for always changing — but the combination of how long it’s been and how short it feels¹ mean the changes all seem colossal.

Much of that is COVID-19. The United States has well and truly squandered the lead it had in vaccines, so scenes I thought had come and gone are still omnipresent here.² I’m not saying it’s unwarranted³ and it’s not more than an annoyance to flash your vaccination card or wear a mask indoors. It’s still a shock coming from Europe, where the restrictions seem mostly either far looser⁴ or far smarter.⁵

But there’s a lot more to it than that; when I left New York for the first time in 2002 I felt the same way. I can still find my way around the subway map without thinking about it, and I can check out new restaurants I’ve heard about⁶ or parks that opened since I’ve been away⁷ and that’s all great, but it’s clear the city’s slipping away from me. I just don’t know the city as well as I used to. Friends have moved to different neighborhoods so I no longer know where to catch the bus or find a bodega. Some of my favorite restaurants closed.⁸ They even changed the voice of the announcements in the subway.

So I’ve kind of spent the last week feeling like I’ve ended up on the wrong side of the Mandala effect, where everything’s almost the same but altered slightly. It’s the uncanny valley of tourism. I’ve gone to some museum shows⁹ and hung out at bars with people I’ve missed and even got to see a movie on the opening day of the new Alamo Drafthouse in Manhattan.¹⁰ But New York is too big for a week, even after living here for a decade. I need a month to catch up. And I’m just not going to have the chance.

I did finally replace my ailing computer, so when I wasn’t running around the city I was decommissioning my MacBook and setting up a new machine. I have a long-seated hatred of Windows,¹¹ and after my last experience soured me on Apple¹² I was ready to switch to Linux. I even had a XPS system all picked out when I stumbled across Framework computers.

The past decade has seen increasingly integrated notebook computers; the MacBook keyboard being built into the case is just the latest of a trend of anti-consumer decisions made by hardware manufacturers. The defense is usually that that kind of integration is necessary for packing more and more components into smaller and smaller spaces. Either way, the end result is less and less control over the machine you own, with fewer and fewer options for fixing it when it breaks, and a shorter and shorter lifespan when you’re forced to upgrade.

That, to put it mildly, sucks. And it has all sorts of knock-on effects. The lack of commodity hardware drives prices up across the board. You’re often locked in to upgrade paths when the corporation which supports your machine abandons it. You can’t even repurpose or donate your computer to charity once you’re done with it, since it’s so cost-prohibitive to fix and keep in working order.

There’s a movement called “right to repair” which lobbies for this on the legislative side of things, trying to pass laws which mandate consumer access to fix the devices they own and ban some of the more egregious practices, like using software locks to cause device malfunctions if they’ve been “tampered” with.¹³

Framework Computers is going at it from the consumer side of things. They’ve been developing an ultrabook¹⁴ using commonly available components and started shipping in July. Early reviews were good, so I took a shot and preordered one, which I finally picked up in the United States.¹⁵

I bought the DIY edition, which means it’s $250 cheaper, comes without an OS installed, and is sorta, kinda disassembled.¹⁶ Putting the thing together took less than 20 minutes — they include the screwdriver you need to open it up,¹⁷ and there’s no glue used anywhere in the assembly — and after some fiddling around with USB drives and BIOS settings¹⁸ I had a laptop where everything just worked.¹⁹

So is it actually any good? Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty great. It feels at least as solid as my MacBook does, while still being a touch lighter. I’m digging the keyboard²⁰ and I’ve been pretty amazed that the WiFi has worked more or less flawlessly. I think the speaker’s a little muddy and maybe the hinge is a little wobbly, although the existence of repair parts for both on the marketplace suggests I’ll be able to swap those out if I decide to at some point. Honestly, the vast majority of my annoyances to date are software, not hardware — which is to say they’re self-inflicted as a result of my switch to Linux. I could have installed Windows instead and been subject to an entirely different set of annoyances.

Should you consider buying one? I mean, yeah, I think so. You’re maybe taking a risk if Framework goes out of business but the ready availability of spare parts and the incredibly low bar to maintaining it yourself should help a lot with that. You can get one preassembled with Windows already installed if that’s your thing. And even if you don’t know anything about maintaining computers you’ll find it trivial to find people who know enough to work on it, and given how detailed the repair guides they’ve released are you can probably swap out components yourself if you need to.

Obviously, if you’re in the EU you probably want to hold off until they actually launch there, and if there’s some specific keyboard or chipset²¹ you want or you’re holding out for a 15" or 17" screen it might not make the best sense. And I can understand waiting for a few months or a year to see how they fare on a slightly longer timeline; I’ve seen enough promising companies flame out from mismanagement or bad market conditions to know that there’s always a risk buying early.

But for me, and the reason I feel so good about my decision, it was a rare opportunity to actually do something positive and meaningful with my consumer choices. I feel like I’ve got a solid piece of hardware in my hands, made by people who gave a damn about the product they were making and the ethical impact of their actions. I like that I can fix most of that obvious things that can go wrong with just a T5 Torx screwdriver. And supporting fledgling companies in the awkward early stages of growth can make a big difference in the long term. I want this company to succeed. It really feels like it could make a difference.

I’m waiting in JFK for a flight to San Francisco. I’m going to be in San Francisco and Portland before heading inland for a couple weeks and flying out of Vegas. I keep trying to get friends to visit me but it’s difficult,²² so half of this is crashing with people I know, and the other half is vacationing with friends who could swing intranational flights easier than international ones.

One of the strange side-effects of my life and the choices I’ve made, political and otherwise, is that I’m rarely in the United States, so I’m quickly becoming better traveled through Europe than in the country I lived until three years ago.²³ I’m looking forward to seeing more of it. We’ll see how I feel after three weeks.

I don’t have plans after that. I’ll be in England for a bit, most likely, but I’ve no idea where I’m spending Christmas or New Year’s and the next solid thing on my itinerary is in early March. I guess I’ll play things by ear, for the first time since I started traveling. But that’s a problem for mid-November, not mid-October. I’ll get there.

Next: Halloween, 2021, Portland
Prev: Milan (MXP) to New York City (JFK)

Footnotes

¹ The lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 paradoxically felt like they were eternal and — since nothing ever happened — like no time at all passed between going in and coming out.

² Like those jury-rigged outdoor dining spaces, or reserved times for museums.

³ Honestly, I stopped tracking infection rates a while ago. I’d be less cavalier if I weren’t vaccinated, but the vastly different testing regimes from month to month and country to country make understanding any of it a full-time job.

⁴ Norway and Denmark with no remaining restrictions, for example.

It seems pretty clear to me that most places which have opened up are trying to encourage as many people to catch it as possible provided that doesn’t overwhelm hospitals or spike the death rate. With luck that will avoid the worst of the spikes over the winter. Since we’re long past containment strategies, preparing for it to be endemic is the only option. And the more people who have resistance, whether from catching it or getting vaccinated or both, the better off everyone is.

Of course, governments can’t come out and say that, even if it is good public health policy. And it’s not even an option for places which are struggling to hold down numbers in the first place. Which is where most of the United States is at.

⁵ Austria specifically mandates FFP-2 masks and everybody had them. The New York subway has ads encouraging people to wear masks and show people how to wear them, but the examples show people wearing bandanas. Which, I mean, better than nothing, right?

I can’t help but wonder what the effects would have been of a smart public health messaging campaign right at the start explaining that:

1. we think masks help, so we’re going to require them while we gather data

2. we know surgical masks are better than homemade cloth masks, and we know FFR masks are better than surgical masks, but given the worldwide shortage of both we’re going to start with cloth masks until the supply issues ease up

3. we’ll be updating the rules when we have more data and when the supply improves, so you should expect it

4. we’ll be publicly and freely distributing whatever masks are required for you to wear

⁶ Eleven Madison Park is regarded as one of the best restaurants in New York City, and they announced they were going completely plant-based when they reopened after the lockdowns. I was super excited to score a reservation.

I’d actually been a long time ago, before the current ownership and the current chef, so I was interested in seeing how the space had changed. It’s still a little austere — it’s taken over one of the lobbies of a 1930s art deco skyscraper, built back when big dramatic open spaces were the norm in corporate architecture — but warmer than I recall the original incarnation being. The service is also more formal than my tastes, but that’s the style at a lot of these places.

But it’s really all about the food, and the food is … hard to describe. It’s very very good, obviously. And the chef and owner Daniel Humm has a solidly built reputation for meticulously executed dishes. If there’s anything weird about the experience, it’s that they’ve replicated what used to an omnivorous menu in a vegan form, not by swapping mushrooms or tofu in for steak or fish, but by constructing dishes around that logic. It’s like they reconsidered the use of meat and dairy but kept everything else constant.

It’s unfair to compare it to Noma — Noma wasn’t vegan, for one — but I find myself doing it anyway. And Noma’s approach to vegetarian food was a little looser, a little more playful, in a way that probably works better for vegetables but worse for meat than Eleven Madison Park’s approach. Plants are just more fun than steak.

That probably sounds like a negative review, and I wouldn’t recommend Eleven Madison Park for most people. I think you need to be totally on board with the experience to appreciate it, and if that’s true you don’t need my advice in the first place. But it’s undeniable there were some dishes that were mind-blowingly good, just unbelievable, like the tonburi with squash and sumac that tasted like nothing I’ve ever had before — salty and sweet and autumnal. It was great. I’m glad I went. But I’m not fantasizing about going back like I was with Noma.

⁷ Little Island is a tiny, three acre park in the Hudson river. It’s an adorable little oasis which was jammed with people on the Saturday morning I went, although not to the point of feeling overcrowded. It’s kind of half nature retreat, half art installation. Worth an hour of your time if you’re in the area.

⁸ RIP Nyx

⁹ The Jasper Johns exhibition at the Whitney is amazing.

¹⁰ I saw The Last Duel and it’s got some issues.

¹¹ Which I used almost exclusively until my last computer

¹² Documented here, if you must.

¹³ Apple is, once again, guilty of this, where among other “features” their iPhones will helpfully disable facial recognition if you’ve had to repair the camera.

¹⁴ Basically the same weight and form factor as a 13" MacBook or a Dell XPS 13.

¹⁵ They’re still shipping in batches, and aren’t available outside the USA yet, but they’ve promised to launch in the UK and the EU before the end of the year.

¹⁶ You’ve got to pop in the battery and RAM and SSD and WiFi card yourself. Detailed instructions and videos are provided.

¹⁷ Virtually all of the screws use the same head — there are a few flat head screws needed for uncommon repairs — and both sizes are included on the screwdriver they send you. The five screws holding the case on are even captive so you can’t lose them.

¹⁸ Secure boot was enabled by default, which doesn’t work out-of-the-box with Linux

¹⁹ The sole exception is the fingerprint reader, which uses new enough hardware that it requires a Linux kernel patch. And if I knew what I was doing I could pull the latest sources and recompile them and get it turned on. But I don’t. So I’ll wait for other people to figure it out and provide a walkthrough.

²⁰ I understand that’s largely personal preference and some people are especially finicky. They’re in the process of releasing alternate layouts for the EU markets, and I’m very curious to see if they release any first-party or third-party keyboards with alternative key mechanisms. A ThinkPad-like trackpoint is another popular request.

Personally, I just wish I didn’t have one with the Windows logo on it, but I’m holding out for more keyboard options before I worry about swapping it out.

²¹ They don’t currently offer ARM processors, although they’re looking into it.

²² Particularly and understandably so since the start of 2020, admittedly

²³ Apparently, since August, 2018 I’ve spent 46 days in the USA and 47 days in Germany alone. I haven’t even been to Germany since 2019.