Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1020
Kevin McCarthy, Matt Goetz, Google antitrust, Amazon antitrust, sick Jane again, morning bad news, Walmart Radio is back, decoding kindergarten report cards
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am… good? Somewhat surprisingly. The thing about relentlessly trying to be healthy, even in the face of zero evidence that any of it is working, is that you really do feel it when things get insanely stressful and a lot of stuff comes at you. Has my blood pressure gone up 30 points because of work stress in the last three months? Sure. But it was doing that from a healthy blood pressure, instead of an unhealthy one, so, you know, hasn’t killed me. That’s nice.
Important news alert Walmart Radio is back I’ve had to make little trips to Walmart twice this week already and both times Walmart radio was back, so we can all stop worrying about that.
Sorry about yesterday, it was just… a lot. Work is stressful and I had a board meeting at the exact time which I use to write this daily email, and longtime readers will know that Tuesday is the day where I have my one-on-ones with my workers, seven meetings in a day, barely any time in between. So there was no additional moment where I could squeeze this in.
And then I had to watch Jane for bedtime and, surprise surprise, Jane is sick again. Today is day four with a fever of 101. She is on her second day of missing school, from this illness, her sixth so far out of, lemme count… ninetheen days. Wow she’s 31% of her schooling so far. Let that be her forever ratio: miss a third of school and still place in the 97th percentile.
Oh yeah, I figured out how to translate these absolutely context-free scores on her report card, and it involved downloading a 141 page PDF from the University of Oregon, which is clearly not what anyone wants a parent to do. Why would a parent want to know how their kid in school. The irony here is I don’t actually have a lot of ambition for my kid. If she wants to skip college, fine, if she wants to have a kid at sixteen, fine (I hope Emma is skimming today) and clearly at least part of the motivation for these context-free grandes is so that parents don’t go all Tiger Mom on their kids or something? But I don’t care about that, I just want information and context. I feel like I shouldn’t have to download a 141 page PDF from the University of Oregon to learn that my child is reading at a mid-fourth-grade level. I feel like they should just tell me that. But alas.
There are three feet.
I just discovered a really great work trick this morning. I had a large pile of emails I needed to write delivering bad news. And I just banged them all out right as soon as I sat down at my computer and I hid my email app afterward and I am going to not think about them anymore. They are done. Bad news delivered on all fronts first thing in the morning. Terrible. Final decisions, no more discussion, let’s just move on. Get it out of the way first thing. Someone make me a loan officer.
Kevin McCarthy is out and I guess that’s cool and kinda hilarious and yeah I’m just gonna enjoy that and not be one of those scolds who’s all like “no this is not good for democracy blah blah” and just enjoy a) the shadenfreude and b) the paralyzed Republican house. Shame all their committees don’t dissolve when they lose a speaker it’d be great to never hear from Jim Jordan ever again that guy sucks.
I wonder if that Nazi amputee congressdude from my own state whose name I don’t remember is looking at Matt Goetz with unbridled jealousy. I wonder if Matt Goetz is looking at that dude as a cautionary tale that even people in his own state don’t remember his name anymore, less than a year later. I wonder if he thinks this is going to… what? Help him run for governor or senator or something? Nah. Get a Fox show? Maybe, maybe. Maybe Rick Santorum will make him, like, Attorney General or something.
So like many of you know I use like six browsers and I use Microsoft Edge for the pool contracting company and I was doing some stuff in there yesterday and I accidentally did a search the lazy millennial way by typing something into the location bar instead of going to the search site and typing it into the query bar like a grown up, and of course Microsoft Edge does not have Google as its default search engine, it has Bing, and so I did a Bing Search and I gotta say it was… good? Almost certainly better than Google search these days which is just such garbage. So I am hereby switching my default search engine on my primary browser today. How long will it last, I wonder?
I have been following the Google Antitrust trial and… the shit about Bing is crazy? Every year, Bing competes with Google for the privileges of providing default searches in Apple. And every year they lose, but, of course, every year Apple uses their bid to chisel more out of Google. So Bing testified that the existence of Bing makes Google more money than it makes Bing, which is just bonkers. Also Apple supposedly considered its own search engine and, look, I love a lot about Apple, but I gotta say the one thing that would make me willingly use Google search is if Apple made its own search engine the default. I mean I guess I use Apple Maps now but the maps battle always struck me as a sideshow and I didn’t particularly care who won and it wasn’t a given that Apple Maps was going to succeed — remember that? Man, who knew it would eventually become good. Well, I mean, I did but whatever let’s just focus on the zeitgeist at the time. But Apple doing search? Nope. Big nope.
Remember when Zuck did a giant keynote and presentation on Facebook search and launched it with great fanfare and it disappeared, like, a week later? That was so weird. I do kinda think he should try again. But I mean, at this moment, what incentive does any tech giant have in building a search engine? May as well wait for the government to conclude its trial. Trying now would only help Google. Paradoxical.
Speaking of antitrust I’ve seen a few editorials now saying, like this WSJ one, that Lina Khan has a weak case against Amazon. All of them focus on the issue I, your helpful antitrust guide, zeroed in on a week earlier — that the FTC is being creative in its definition of markets. But they draw an opposite conclusion that I do. I think the FTC has a good chance against Amazon. I agree that her definition of an Online Superstore Market is weak, but a) the actual arguments are way stronger than people are giving credit for, and b) that is only one market she defines. The other market is much more cut-and-dry, which is the fulfillment and merchandising services market, which is a real thing and Amazon dominates TF out of that.
ALSO! I mentioned this before but the FTC complaint is so redacted, you can’t actually read any of their evidence, and many of their arguments, and you can’t read about, with few exceptions, all the crazy antitrust tactics Amazon actually used. Only one or two actual tactics creep into the document unredacted, and, I mean, they are bad! If the redacted stuff is worse — which seems a reasonable assumption — then look out, Amazon.
We will see, we will see.
Got a giant gravel delivery for the greenhouse yesteday. The dump truck wouldn’t go up the driveway so he just dumped it on the road, blocking half of the road going into my neighborhood. Sure my neighbors loved that. Took us a couple hours to get a skid steer here to take the gravel, load by load, up the driveway. But it is here now. Sitting in a giant pile in my driveway. Will go into the greenhouse floor — for drainage — today. So that is exciting. one more step done.
Bedtime with Jane was so cute, she snuggled in my lap the whole time cuz she is so run down from this fever and an ear thing or something. She watched Youtube videos with me, choosing which ones to watch, and it was so weird. She watched, with full attention, Doug DeMuro go on and on about his lunatic new purchase of a 1989 Lamorghini Countach with a round bottom and carborated engine as opposed to a fuel-injected one. Not bored at all! I was bored! I would never have finished that video otherwise. She watched the entirety of a robot vac reciew, a lecture on skin color and Adam Savage lecture about the quality of CAD drawings he purchased online. It was really weird. What did she like about these videos, I wonder.
But I was not complaining the snuggling was so good. Many nice snargles.
Miss you, Mike.
Got a post rock playlist for you it is enjoyable especially if you like symphonic guitars with distortion and a lot of drums. Gotta find out more about this Brokenchord band, great name and so far I’ve heard two songs and they are both great.
See you tomorrow fwendz.