Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1151
De-escalation mantra, SNL, Bluey, that Formula 1 article, organ donation corruption, robotic trash arm strategies, is Plex decaying?
Hey hey what is up. Head hurts. Didn’t sleep well. Woke up at 3:30 to pee so now I can’t take Advil agin till.. oh sweet it’s after 7:30 hold please.
Down the hatch.
On the plus side, sort of, I forgot to set my alarm somehow but randomly woke up at 6:14 anyway so hey I guess I’m a morning person now give me an award.
N.B. I am not a morning person this is garbage and always will be.
Good morning, hello, how are you? I am listening to an album called Ei koskaan rakkudella by an artist named Sepika. I don’t know how I discovered it. I like it. It is synthy world music of indeterminate ethnicity, has a little hip hop to it, a little Everything but the Girl, a little Sigur Ros. It is great. A+.
Thank you Scott and Briana for your help on Quickbooks. The answer is “classes.” Not as in “take a class about Quickbooks you rube,” but “learn about the class function in Quickbooks.” Which I will now go do, because Youtube is awesome and makes learning easy.
We watched the 28-minute Bluey episode yesterday and wow, yeah. No spoilers but Emma and I both teared up. Just amazing. Felt like a feature film. Felt epic. Just brilliant. A+.
SNL was once again brilliant too. Do we now all agree that SNL is not in some terrible state of faded glory and is, in fact, in a golden age? Can we stop missing John Candy now?
Longtime readers will be excited to know that I have sorted the exact placement of the trash can on the side of the street so that the robotic trash truck can use its mechanical arm to pick it up and dump it and then place it slightly to the left of where it was, and the new position does not interfere with me turning into my driveway after taking my daughter to school. I have achieved suburban enlightenment. Give me a merit badge.
You might think this is a boring topic but one thing I have learned from 1000+ GMHHAY’s, dear reader, is that no topic is too boring. Whatever boring topic you think is boring, I guarantee someone else finds it fascinating and has emailed me about it and we’re having nice email chats about it. The world contains multitudes.
I am sitting here today in a mildly cranky mood as a work complication is intertwining in my head with my Adam-Curtis-slash-Noam-Chomsky-inspired cultural skepticism and I just can’t wrap my head around how the entire world is offended by Iran’s actions this week and hardly anyone is talking about why they did it, how the cold war between Iran and Israel was really blown wide open by the manifestly illegal bombing of a freakin’ embassy. They bombed an embassy! This is totally illegal! It’s a war crime! It’s bad! And they did it with American F-35 fighters! An embassy is not a legitimate military target ever! It’s not a legitimate military target just because some soldiers are hanging out in it. Especially when the soldiers hanging out in the embassy are welcome by the host country! Especially when none of the countries involved are supposedly at war! It’s insane!
And look, sending hundreds of drones and missiles toward a country is not cool of course not. But that was the tat for the tit and Iran has said it’s over and the whole freakin world is like Israel cannot stand for this they must respond! Where does it end? And yes I have picked an arbitrary moment in the thousands of years of Mideast misery but I’m sorry maybe don’t bomb embassies ever! Iran “invaded” the American embassy in Terhran in 1980, sure, but a) they didn’t kill anyone! and b) they didn’t bomb it! and c) it wasn’t in some random third country that neither party was at war with! And America still got pissed and our president lost his election and it was a giant slap in the face.
Just insane. It is depressing.
Meanwhile in my professional life I am fighting the urge on multiple fronts to go ballistic and escalate things, etc. etc. But I am a grown-ass adult and I won’t do it because this is not healthy! We should not act out of aggreivedness! We should resist the urge! Yes it’s hard! Do it anyway!
(Is “Aggreivedness” a word? “Aggrevation” does not seem right but maybe that’s because we’re all getting dumber and we need things spelled out more these days or at least I do anyway if it’s not I made it up for you I hope you enjoy it.)
Plex is decaying. It is sad. I used to have maybe 20 friends on Plex that regularly updated their libraries and shared with me. Several of them have unfriended me, or disconnected their Plex, or something. Several more have stopped updating their libraries. I’m down to maybe four or five actively maintained friend libraries. I know that Plex has been cracking down a bit, at the behest of the movie industry, on people who have, like, a thousand friends on Plex. It is a media library meant for personal sharing, not widespread sharing. Fair enough. And I think maybe one of my old Plex friends was in that camp: the vast majority of people I am connected with on tghere are personal friends who only share with a few people.
I’ve also heard that there has been some Plex “password sharing” going on. So, like, someone with a big library shares with a close friend. They’re not being a bad actor or a pirate, just sharing with a single friend. But then that friend takes that username/password combo and posts it on the internet or something, so suddenly a good actor is sharing their library with thousands of people. This has made me a little paranoid, and so for the last few weeks I have been monitoring my Plex outbound sharing usage from my own Plex server. I am happy to report that all my friends have been trustworthy.
It does feel like else is going on. Like maybe people are paying for more subscriptions. Or watching fewer movies. Or… I don’t know. I just sense something.
BUT, if you are a Plex user, and we’re not friends, drop a line!
I don’t usually like to do articles, but I want to mention two recent articles I read. Both a little old, since my article queue is ever-growing and I am constantly behind.
This article about the organ donation system in America and the monopoly there is bonkers and depressing and insane. It is heartening to see that the fundamental problems within it are finally being addressed. It’s doubly heartening that they are being addressed, essentially because of the valiant efforts of two individuals. A nice reminder that we, as individuals, can make a difference in the world. It’s also a really educational article about exactly how the organ donation system in America works, why and how it is a government-sanctioned monopoly, and how utterly corrupt it is. If you read one thing today, read this.
This article, on the other hand, is a hilarious sort of gonzo-esque dive into the Formula 1 world, written by a journalist who had utterly no business covering Formula 1, but did a fantastic and honest job anyway. which is more than I can say for me. This was like three weeks ago so you may have heard about it. It was a paid gig sponsored by a car company, and they were upset enough that the magazine in which the article appeared was pulled by the magazine. But that is silly. It was a great article, and despite being an outsider, the author did their research, and cares about Formula one.
Which is more than I can say for myself.
Finally, I would like to encourage anyone in the Boston area to go see our friend Mike Gill’s (with Soctt Evans) film about the legendary Boston impresario Billy Ruane. This was a passion project for Mike, working on it for years before he passed away. It will be incredibly cathartic to finally see it. It’s going to hurt. Doubly so for those of us who knew Billy. I desperately want to go to its premiere at the Independent Film Festival Boston on May 4th, but I don’t know if I can pull that off. And I don’t know that I could handle it if I did. But you should go.
Now let’s go and not be aggrieved and escalate all disagreements today. Team de-escalation. Like a mantra.
Got a moody and quiet playlist for you today as the Media of the Day. All new, I think, except for the “Cut Your Bangs” song, which came on shuffle a few days ago and every time it does it makes me happy. I love it. I have said it before but I am a big fan of the new Adrianne Lenker not having previously loved her stuff. And I am still opposed to the spelling of her first name but man, this album is great. Love the Thou album of Nirvana covers. Love the new Neubauten need to listen to it REALLY LOUD. Big fan of my friend (and GMHHAY reader) Miranda’s new band Hidden Skyline. Also thank you Miranda for sending me that article about wine reducing stress it is 100% correct. I had another glass of wine last night to laugh in the face of my Monday morning and it worked.
Y’all have a good day now, y’hear? Wait did I use that one recently? My god, things really blur after 1,000+ daily emails. I regret that I have but one life to give to graphomania.
not sure if you’re a fan of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver but they did a show on organ & body donation that was very alarming. i haven’t read the article you linked yet but i suspect there’s some overlap 😁