Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1012
Jane is sick but boy she is nice to me, PageRank is dead, Google is ripe for the toppling, and they are a wholesale copyright thief in plain sight, TMI health stuff, Nick Cave lollygagging in NC
Good morning! Hello! How are you? Up bright and early today, back at ‘em. 6:20 AM. And then I realized that this was pointless, because I didn’t know one way or the other if Jane was going to go to school today, so it’s not like I could start prepping breakfast and lunch and whatnot before I get her up at seven. So I lollygagged in bed and it was lovely. Checked in on her at 7 AM, she was sound asleep, didn’t stir when I opened the door, and let out a horrible sounding sniffle. That’s enough for me. No school today. The doctor gave her these drops for her pink eye that she has to take every two hours, so even if I did take her to school, I’d have to stop at the office on the way in and say something along the lines of “hello my daughter has a potentially highly infectious pink eye malady, could you stick these drops in her eyes every two hours? Also the drops only work if she has the bacterial variant not the viral variant, and who knows which she has.” I mean it doesn’t seem to me that the school cares too much about kids coming in sick, but this may be a bridge too far. Like sneaking your gummies past the TSA. They’ll look the other way but maybe don’t be holding them in your hand or offering one to them.
Our evening was lovely. Seem to have turned a corner this trip where she does not spend days and days avoiding me and looking at me askance after I return from a trip. She was enthusiastic about daddy bedtime, and told me “I love you!” like four times, unbidden. Great word, unbidden. Works wonderfully in text form, but every time you use it verbally, no one is quite sure what you just said. Anyway, we hit all the hits. Action parenting. We played with LEGO, we put LEGO away, we did parkour, we did chaos bed party, we did dance party — thank you Olivia Rodrigo for your third single finally being a bop that kids love as well as having a video that is kid appropriate. Showed her and mommy Olivia’s Today Show appearance the other day. I’d say today show appearances are things I miss about living in NYC but who am I kidding I could never be bothered to head that far uptown. Spacemen 3 could play the Today Show and I’d be like “eh, it’s early, and that’s above 22nd.”
So I am trying to decide if I’m gonna go to this Nick Cave show tomorrow. Solo. DPAC — the posh performing arts center. It is a solo show — no Bad Seeds. I… Man I do not know. Emma can’t go, parenting shit, but she thinks I should go alone or find someone. And I don’t mind going alone, but… Nick. Will I regret not going? I’ve seen him solo at piano a few times. They are good but they’re no Bad Seeds shows. I’ve been worried it’ll be all these droney new songs (giant drone fan here but Nick, Warren and Drone are not my thing). So I decided to look at the setlist and it turns out that Nick hasn’t really done any solo piano shows since the Covid-lockdown Alexandra Place show. This DPAC show is the second show of the tour. The first show was last night in Asheville. So now, this morning, there is a setlist to peek at and, yeah, wow, hrm. There are some real gems in there. I mean, sadly he is not playing the entirety of Henry’s Dream, you gotta sit through the interminable “Higgs Boson Blues” and he’s not playing “Wild World” like the time Andy Shea and I saw him solo in New York (miss you brother), but it still has some real gems. I am paralytically torn and will probably remain so for the next 48 hours. Nick is only 65. There is probably time for one more Bad Seeds tour, right? I mean shit Peter Gabriel just killed it at 73.
Another interesting thing is that the Asheville show was last night and the Durham show is tomorrow night which means for at least 48 hours or so, Nick Cacve is just kicking around North Carolina, that is a funny thought. I wonder what he’s doing. Fishing maybe.
So I’m wiping these Mac laptops from work so we can donate them to the Epic Transitional nonprofit that helps ex inmates transition back to society, and the first three went fine but now I’m one that is giving me all sorts of errors with both my Mojave and El Capitan USB install sticks — both of which I know are fine because I just used them on the previous three laptops. And I Everymac’d this laptop and its a bit newer than the others, but it came with El Capitan originally so I ought to be able to put one of these two OSs on it, but it’s giving me all these security errors. And I recall that at some point Apple threw authenticity certificates into this process, or some certificates expired, or something. And I think that’s what I’m up against except I can’t remember the details. And Googling it will be an absolute nightmare because Google is completely, utterly, irredeemably broken. The original insight that made Google Google — PageRank — just isn’t true anymore. I think this is a thing we need to talk about more, like the way we’re always talking about whether Moore’s Law is going to end. PageRank has come to an end. Never mind that Google is hell-bent on full-on stealing the content of the entire internet with its garbage-ass feature where it tells you things right on their main page when you Google. And double never mind their AI endeavor, Bard, that’s trying to steal content of the entire internet even more effectively. Acutally, yes, let’s mind that.
At the core, Google is rotten, twice over. PageRank is dead, and they are in the midst of full-on copyright violation and infrinegement and it’s totally crazy to me that they are not being prosecuted for this — there are myriad antitrust lawsuits going on about Google, but none, insofar as I can tell that deal with the fact that Google is a literal chokehold on the entire internet, albeit a rotting one, and one that is stealing from the entire internet, in plain sight.
It really is something.
And none of this is going to get fixed until someone has a new insight about how to algorithmically find true and real information on the internet: a new insight to replace PageRank. Competing search engines don’t seem to have done that yet. They seem to just be reinventing the wheel, rather than making a rocket ship. I give that metaphor a C, but you get the idea. Zuck got into this for a smidge when he rolled out Facebook search with much ballyhoo, and it was actually pretty good! And then he just gave up. And I guess he’s in a position now to get anti-trusted if he went after Google. BUT I think Zuck could probably, at this point, offer up a search API that grabs from Instagram, Threads and Facebook and it.. ha well, actually, it would be a misinformation nightmare never mind.
Seriously, though, hundred-billion-dollar market ripe for the taking. All it needs is the idea. Not even that capital intensive to get to MVP.
Maddening.
I forgot to tell you: I got that life insurance policy. They jacked up the premium a bit, of course, and quite reasonably, but I got it. So I guess they don’t think I’m going to die soon, which is a nice bill of health, lol. I also upped my blood pressure medication and it knocked my blood pressure down a bit but nothing compared to where it was back in, oh, June or so. So that is still somewhat alarming. Man I love talking about boring-ass health ailments with you guys, it really is deeply satisfying. We all have them, the only thing on the internet to do with them is google them and convince yourself you’re going to die. Mine just come and go, boring AF. My left fingers are mostly healed now from the trigger finger. I still have some subconscious trauma when I try and close my fist — I’ve convinced myself it hurts so I don’t do it, but when I force myself to it is 95% just fine. My tennis elbow is still here, but barely. I did one of the two moves that really trigger it — lift up a six pack of soda and hold it from the top with your arm straight out — and it still hurt, but nothing like it used to. I’ve been wearing this elbow reinforcement band for so long now, night and day for months. I barely even think about it anymore.
Although yesterday I was on one of my seven or so calls and I was moving some 2x4s into the garage because they are just getting ruined outside, and in the process I got bit by a chigger or a fire ant or something, and the lil bastard bit me right underneath my tennis elbow brace, so now I have this stinging AF bite and welt underneath the band. Lovely.
Oh and you will all be happy to know that the spray worked just fine and my jock itch has subsided it was probably never jock itch anyway, it was probably itching manifesting from some summer chafing and new underwear at the Somerville house and that’s the thing about jock itch sprays you want the one with the powder in it too not just the cream because a lot of the time it’s not a fungal thing its a chafe thing and the powder mitigates this and I have talked about UTIs so much more in my life than I have ever talked about jock itch, which I’ve not had since the 90’s so you can indulge me two paragraphs ever k thanks. At least I did not bold the words “jock itch” for the skimmers. The GMHHAY skimmers are really missing out on the jock itch saga. Maybe I’ll put it in the subhead description just to fuck with people.
Jane just let out a cough in her sleep. Sounded terrible. Not awake yet. Poor baby.
Here’s some live music for you. Old and new. Kinda all over the place but I tried to give it a bit of a flow.
Ahoy! Jane calls. Farewell, reader, until tomorrow.