Good morning. Hello. How are you #1025
Jane's sick, MIL's sick, I'm home, chores chores chores, my bin saga as a parable about Lina Khan's case against Amazon, the Carolina Reaper REAP-OFF
Good morning. Hi. Hello. Mondays, amirite? Jane’s sick. Crawled into my bed at seven. There was already no school today — a teacher workday. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. Then she told me it was her stomach, so I gave her some Nauzene. Then she told me it was her butt and I should have realized then it was diarhhea, which I still can’t freakin spell at the age of 51, four books published, but I did not. Put some butt cream on. Then we went downstairs cuz she didn’t want breakfast. Then she went to the bathroom and a-ha, I see what’s going on here, long tangent about the spelling of the band a-ha vs “ah ha,” who I would spell the interjection were I not making an oblique reference.
And then Emma wakes up and says MIL is sick from shot so I gotta go to the store for both of them and… even though Jane woke me up 30 minutes early, here I am 90 mins behind in writing to you.
School’s an absolute joke for “routines,” I gotta say. So many holidays and workdays and sicknesses it feels like we’ll never get into a groove.
I did get into a groove this weekend, though. Emma kept me out of the house for quarantining reasons so I just spent, like from 7AM to 5PM both days working on the other house. We couldn’t start the greenhouse yet, because it was raining, so it was a lot of organizing and getting the shop tip top chop chop hop on popp (some deep Boston rock cuts there). I organized the shit out of things. I fabricated metal bands to mount my 4-foot power strip on the wall, mounted my battery chargers above it, it was all very legit. Drill presses and table saws were involved my god I love my drill press it really is the best.
Anyway, look at this shit. And we’ll do a rare double photo hit here, because I am very proud.
So I got this new area outside, and I put a bunch of bins out there, but i really feel like it’s gonna need a roof, or an overhang or something. We had heavy rains all day Saturday, and while everything was protected just fine from the water, it did pool up on the lids of everything. I don’t want to make it a huge thing, but I’m not exactly sure what to do here. Suggestions welcome:
Also I cleaned up my pallet jack with a bunch of WD-40 so all the parts would work together better, except I did it in the garage, so the garage floor got comically slippy and almost killed me and I had to spend an hour pressure-washing the garage floor, but in the end, man, wow, yeah, clean floor. So mixxed blessing. But beware sparing WD-40 on concrete it’ll kill ya.
What else, what else. Oh right. I did all of this because I am still looking for my lost Google Titan USB-A Security Key. Thank christ I bought four of them and all my accounts had at least one backup on it. So I spent an hour on Friday evening (which I spent alone, so alone), making sure every one of my Google accounts had all my security keys on it, so I wouldn’t become perilously close to getting locked out of my Google accounts. I supposedly have all my backup codes somewhere but who wants to test that never-used system. Anyway, when I got back from my last trip, I know I used USB-A #1 at the second house at least once, but then I lost it. So it is somewhere in my possession (two s’s, twice). But I can’t find it anywhere. A while back Emma taught me how to go to through the Roomba waste and it wasn’t in there. And I’d already checked my dust-collection vac. So I sucked it up and assumed it was time to check my main shop vac, but decided if I was gonna do that I should also check my truck, and if I was gonna do that, I should combine the two tasks and clean out the truck. So I did a full detailing, vacuuming, wiping down, cleaning of the entire interior of the truck. Then I checked the shop vac. All in an effort to find Google Titan USB-A #1.
And no luck.
I’ll never find that key.
Here have some topics not about me:
I just learned about the Carolina Reaper scandal, this is a thing that has been going on for a while. Apparently some dude invented a pepper that was the world’s hottest pepper, the seven pot primo. Then suspiciously quickly afterward, a non-entity in the pepper world burst on the scene claiming his “new pepper,” the Carolina Reaper, was even hotter. Except he keeps changing his story about how he made it, and whether its stable, and how long he worked on it, and what peppers were used. Also it suspiciously looks exactly like the seven pot primo. Many people in the pepper world strongly suspect that the Carolina Reaper is the Seven Pot Primo.
Something like five years ago when I was learning to grow peppers I was sad about the dearth of quality pepper growing youtube content but I came across this pretty good Youtube channel, “Welsh Chili” which had some decent how-to videos. The channel was mostly dormant for the last couple years but then this week it published an “expose” about the Carolina Reaper, decently edited but with a terrible sound mix. But my god was it engrossing. Really a case study in how brilliant Youtube can be on a good day. Here watch a Welsh metal fan take down the Carolina Reaper:
Just PSA I now buy Lina Khan’s definition of a market for the Amazon antitrust suit. I mean the second market, merchant services, was always clear, even though all the editorials pretend the second market doesn’t exist, and a finding of monopolistic practices in only that second market would have huge ramifications for Amazon and honestly Lina probably shoulda lead with that market.
But the more I think about it, the more I think that the first market, online superstore, is indeed a separate market from the larger “online commerce” market. I had two experiences this week — totally common ones that I think we all have — that really drove it home.
First, the bin saga. Whole thing, needed a couple bins to match a bin I have, bought the original at Walmart, went to get more, they only had bins no lids, looked on Amazon, the bins were like 3x as much cuz it’s probably some Hefty-Walmart exclusive, so I ordered from Walmart’s “online super store” explicitly asking to be shipped bins from a warehouse, except they fulfilled them to my house with the exact two lidless bins they had in the store. I had to return them. They are now back on the shelf. And I can’t get them from Walmart.
But they are on Amazon.
And they cost $118 for six, I need three, and the per-unit price is twice what they were at Walmart.
Which leads me to my second epiphany. Home Depot, Lowe’s, they can’t really compete with Amazon, they don’t really compete with them, becuase you only ever order from them when you already know exactly what you need, and know they are the place to get it, like a specific Dewalt or Milwaukee (especially the latter) tool or Rockwool or something. Where Amazon is specifically useless. But you would never, ever, go to Homedepot.com just to check randomly if they had something, because they never do, because they are not a super store.
Though I did just Google these bins, and they are for sale at Home Depot, which I never would have even thought to have checked were it not for Lina Khan so, thank you I guess Lina.
Color of the lids is wrong, though.
Bin lids. Seasonable and fashioned colors of poisoning plastic wtf is wrong with our country we are absolute lunatics.
I guess that was kinda about me. Anyway, if Lina argues this case well, I think people will come round. And if she fails on market one, she still has that second market and that could still do the trick, especially on the advertising front.
Look at this awesome picture of this junior firefighter. Just like her grandpa.
Here’s a mix of all the songs that have been sitting at the top of my “to investigate” playlist for months, because I am always happy to re-listen to every one of them. This is basically my daily playlist of late so why not let you guys enjoy it too. Didn’t even change the order.
OK, again, sorry this is late hopefully tomorrow we will be back to normal.
when “I Remember Everything” came on i swooned ❤️