Wasteland wrap-up #66

The experience of a London coffin hotel, Egyptian geese and Soviet chickens, The Darjeeling Limited, prospects for un-inventing nuclear weapons...

This was a busy week — a lot of friends from other countries were in town, on account of a big conference on AI ethics at UNESCO. It was great to see people, although I pretty much did a month’s worth of social activities in one week, which felt like a lot! I also took the Eurostar train to London to give a talk at the London School of Economics (LSE), about the new book, which went well.

In the Paris Metro, even the warning signs are fashionable. Electrical hazard, a leisure-suited man undergoing divine punishment, or new dance craze — you tell me. If I had a New Wave rock band, this would be our logo. A visual metaphor of our times, perhaps…

I had initially planned for the LSE trip to be a day trip — train over in the morning, train back in the evening — which is tiresome but doable (the London–Paris train is about 3 hours or so). But I realized somewhat late in the planning that the return trip left a bit too early for that to work with the time of my talk, and so I decided, at the last minute, to stay the night and come back in the morning.

But where to stay? London is expensive, especially at the last minute, and I was not doing this as a holiday. When I looked online, I saw that there were some very cheap options in central London: “capsule” or “coffin” hotels, of the Japanese style. I thought, hey, let’s give it a try! For £34, it might be one night of bad sleep, but to be honest probably any option was going to be that (I don’t sleep that well in hotels, either), so I might as well see how it is. And the location was good; hard to beat that price for any bed in Piccadilly Circus, which was not far from where I would need to be for my train.

My coffin — I mean, cocoon.

This place calls the little rooms “cocoons,” which is a better name than capsule or coffin, but they are still little coffins. I’ve read about these kinds of things and always wondered how they’d be in practice. There’s something very appealing to me about a little private space and a low price — I don’t mind a somewhat spartan existence for these kinds of overnight stays.

This one also leveraged modern technology in useful ways: there are multiple floors, and access to each floor is only allowed by a key card. Once on the floor, there are multiple rooms (“dorms”) with maybe a dozen or so capsules in them, and the key card again is necessary to get into your “dorm.” The actual cocoon does not have any kind of outside lock on it — you can bring or rent a padlock if you are going to leave stuff in it for the day — but you can lock it from the inside. There is a large (co-ed) shared wash/shower/bathroom area for each floor. There are CCTV cameras (it’s the UK, after all) in all common areas.

The “dorm” I was in. As you can see, there are a number of “cocoons” on the bottom, with a couple going length-wise across them on the top (with a little flight of stairs going to the upper ones). I was on a lower one. Apologies for the blurriness — not ideal lighting for my phone camera, and I was trying to be rather quick about taking photos…

The cocoons are not that large. About the length of a couch. I am definitively average American male height and I could fit in the bed, but even I found it a bit cramped. Anyone taller than average is not going be able to stretch out all the way.

There is no storage space at all; there are a couple of hooks that you can attach a backpack or duffle bag to, but you’re basically just sharing the bed space with your luggage, clothes, shoes, etc. There is a light and a somewhat noisy fan, an electrical outlet, and a USB charging port.

The head clearance is pretty low, so you have to think about how you are maneuvering. You can sit up a bit. Definitely not for the claustrophobic (I am not). The walls are not thick so you can hear people talking or coughing; people were mostly pretty quiet, though. The noisy fan helps a bit as it acts like a white noise machine.

The biggest difficulties of the setup were that the bed was not quite firm enough for me, and that tends to make my legs ache a bit after awhile, and there aren’t a lot of options for repositioning them in such a small space. More importantly, the pod is pretty warm — the little fan can’t possibly deal with the ventilation of a (living) human being in a coffin, much less 20 of them stacked next to and on top of each other. It wasn’t a deal-breaker, but it wasn’t great.

Enclosed in my cocoon, with the door shut, sitting up in the bed. You can see my luggage at left — really just a laptop bag and a small duffle with some toiletries in it. As you can see the bed is just about my length — arguably a little undersized, as I occasionally would kick the door while rearranging myself. The fact that my sock turned out to have a hole in it just really completes the picture, does it not?

All together, I would say that it was not a great night’s sleep — but again, I don’t sleep all that well in hotel beds anyway, so that is often the outcome for me. I wasn’t the worst. It wasn’t as enjoyable as the fantasy of it. Would I do it again? I don’t know — maybe in a real pinch. Better than sleeping on a street bench, I guess.

I think perhaps the real comparison would be between this and a “normal” hostel. I haven’t slept in one of those, although I’ve at times considered it for trips like this. What has kept me away from them is the shared dorm experience — I want my privacy, I don’t want to worry about other people snoring or partying or talking or thieving. And that is really the “problem” (real or perceived) that the cocoon is trying to solve: it is a shared dorm experience, but with some privacy. The problem is that the privacy comes at the expense of comfort, both in terms of reduced space and the lack of adequate ventilation. And you still are at the mercy of the others with you regarding noise, although in my case the others were pretty respectful (and perhaps everyone being locked up in their little cocoons reduces the will to socialize, or perhaps it is just self-selecting… who knows).

Could it have been better? Sure — if the cocoons were just a little longer, you could imagine them holding luggage a bit better and not feeling quite so cramped. If they were each a little taller and with some more engineering attention given to airflow and ventilation, you could imagine the warmth issue not mattering so much. Or so it seems to me.

Some photos from Regent's Park, London

The night was very quiet, though, so that is something. In the morning everyone basically got up and emerged at about the same time — probably by necessity, as anyone getting up produces a good deal of thunking of heads into pod ceilings. I washed up and checked out and wandered off to find some breakfast.

After that, I had a few hours to kill before my train, so I went for a walk and ended up in Regent’s Park, which was nice. I was amused by the presence of not one, but two statues along the theme of “ugly babies attacking birds.” While walking down the path, this amusing little Egyptian goose walked down past me, with great determination, like he had somewhere to be and had no time to talk. Perhaps he was worried about the advertised ugly babies getting him. Perhaps he was late for a very important date. I also saw a massive mute swan flying around the park at high speed, which was impressive, but I failed to get a good photograph of it in flight, alas.

Lyndon au café, in Paris.

I don’t have any novel thoughts on the news of the day, particularly the US and Israeli attacks on Iran. What will they bode, in the short or longer term? What kind of war is this? I don’t have any clever insights, just inquiet — “worried” in French, one of those little words that somehow works even better in English than in French. Every week is some kind of new fresh horror, danger, and spiraling uncertainty, with people at the helm who you wouldn’t trust to watch your dog (much less your children).

I do appreciate that being abroad allows me some sense of distance, some slightly removed sense of culpability, but it is not as much as one might desire. At least the weather has been nice here, I suppose — people are already speaking of springtime, something my experiences of living on the US east coast have caused me to be superstitious of, but it would be nice if it were true. Last week, there were days that were 60ºF / 16ºC here — truly warm! So I am grateful for that, at least.

Last week, I watched the made-for-TV nuke thriller By Dawn’s Early Light (1990), which I found to be amusing but not that great. I am aware that many people like it (there is little that such a statement cannot be said for), particularly people who saw it when they were young. Look, I liked Robot Jox (1989) when I was a kid, and I can still like it today, but that doesn’t make it, you know, great cinema. I wrote up some thoughts about it for Doomsday Machines while I was on my Eurostar train back to Paris on Friday, taking one of more of silly quotes in the film for the post title:

If you want to watch the entire thing easily, it is currently on YouTube, because apparently even HBO doesn’t really care about its copyright status these days: