Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1046
RIP Alain Sylvain. Elon's antisemitism. Zuck's pathology. Bluesky's madhouse. Google expiring usernames. A new electric wood chipper contestant steps into the arena.
Well hello. Howdy. Hola. Just back from Jane drop off. Finally got a good look at the jacked up white Econoline van with black bike rack and top rack. Have been wondering how the kids get out. Answer is, they sort of jump. I’m sad, though, cuz I had a vision that the dude driving it was kinda like any Alaskan hippie that might have a van but nope. Upon closer inspection, dude has a Punisher sticker and drives too fast. Oh well.
In some horrible news, I recently learned that an old friend, Alain Sylvain, committed suicide this week. Fucking horrible. Had a family. Just an amazing dude. Optimistic, brilliant, I can’t understand it. We served on a board together for the better part of a decade, and he ran an amazing company, Sylvain Labs. Employed over 50 people what is going to happen to them all, oh, god, Alain, what happened. It’s just awful. My heart goes out to his family, his coworkers.
In some astonishingly good news, though, omg, omg, there is a new entrant in the electric wood chipper market, and it looks amazing, and it is American. I mean, I doubt it’s actually manufactured in America, lol, (no diss on America’s manufacturing rebound, it’s real, but also, lol) but man, it looks awesome. Three inch trees. Giant batteries, just ridiculously giant. I am so excited about this thing. Announced three months ago, the Youtube video of the product announcement only had 272 views before I found it yesterday. If all you guys watch it, we could double the view count!
Anyway, I really really want it but a) there are no independent reviews of it yet, and b) it is a hella ton of money, c) they also put out a battery-powered log splitter on the same platform, of course, weeks after I finally break down and buy the only American battery-powered log splitter after waiting a year, but that’s not the point, the point is the specs on it are a little weaker than the Ryobi one — well, I mean, it only does 16” diameter logs and not 20”. So, like, is the chipper the best chipper it could be? Am I gonna spend a ton of money on it only to find out Ryobi makes a better chipper at half the price a bit later? This seems a fast-moving market (lol, two new devices in the four years I’ve been watching it). I don’t want to wait, as Paula Cole says, but I also don’t want to buy the wrong thing. Ryobi (or Dewalt I guess, though they are so crappy at OPE), come save me from the wrong decision by putting out a 3” chipper on your 40V platform please k thanks.
But seriously. Look at this thing:
Google wrote to me and told me that my Blogger account hadn’t been logged into in fifteen years and so they were going to delete it unless I logged in and connected it to my Google account. I was unaware I had a Blogger account, but I went to Blogger and logged in with my old pre-1Password, pre-password security, username/password combo that I used on every site back in the oughts when the internet was simpler, and I logged in just fine and found that I did, in fact, have a Blogger account, on which I had made two entries. Pretty happy I preserved that.
Google is expiring a bunch of usernames that haven’t been logged into in a long time and I am mildly concerned I have one or two that I forgot about but, then, I guess if I forgot about them I don’t care? Do you?
While we’re on the topic of the tech companies that rule our lives, let us go through the catalog of horrors from just yesterday:
Elon Musk approvingly agreed with the blatantly anti-semitic comments of an avowed Hitler lover. Like basically Protocols level anti-semitism here, not the “all anti-Zionists are antisemitic type” or the “he said one phrase people debate” type. Just full-on, classic antisemitism of the harshest vintage. Like the people over on the Nazi social networks are like “he’s one of us” level. Just astonishingly bad. Like 10x worse than pedo guy on the cave dude bad. Like if this dude were CEO of any other company, he would be forced to resign today bad. Like the Tesla board members are obviously all failing in their duties because they haven’t fired him yet bad. It was not a mis-speak, he did not take it down right away, there’s really no room for misjudgement. You can go look it up if you want, but I’m not gonna post it here.
It is not on the front page of any paper — it absolutely would be if it were, say, Jamie Dimon or Jim Farley or Tim Cook or Bob Iger or any other powerful American CEO. I would wager a good chunk of money nothing will happen to him because of it. It’s just astonishing and terrible.
So, yeah, that’s just great.
Next we have Zuck, who has decided that he will take money from people who want to run ads saying that the 2020 election was not won by Joe Biden. Super cool.
Free speech, he says.
Meanwhile you can’t run an ad with a boob.
Decency, he says.
Cool, cool.
And then over on Bluesky we have the worst UX in the world. I go and log in, I follow something like 150 accounts, and all I see are two people arguing — one of which I don’t know. And I mean, I don’t see this like you would see it on Twitter, with one post, and a reply, and you think “oh yeah I want to get my nose in this drama” so you click expand and scroll down and read the whole thread from the beginning, nope. It is something like 200 individual posts, out of order, utterly incomprehensible, and it is something like 90% of my feed. It’s just amazing. I do not need that shit. I don’t even care about what they’re arguing about. I mean, I care a bit but c’mon man, quarantine that shit. It is unusable.
So Threads it is, but even Threads is filled with these lunatics who post like 200 times a day and I do not understand it. I know for a fact these people have jobs, they have kids, like… what are they doing posting across multiple microblogging services hundreds, thousands of times a day? It is insane.
The whole reason I have to use the algorithm at all is because of these lunatics. And I like them! And I agree with them! But they just fucking babble on and on. This comes from a dude who writes a million words a year into a newsletter. And so now I need to unfollow them and it’s just a drag.
And Threads is run but a bunch of sociopaths, but they’re sociopaths with good design skills so we like it, even though their design looks pretty but actually sucks because it discoungs, wait for it, fucking THREADS.
And they let people run ads denying the 2020 elections. And these selfsame people have already ruined two different social networks and they are going to ruin this one as soon as we’re all hooked on it and they are going to put fifty million ads on it (and I’m an ad guy!) and they are going to make the sound be on all the time and it’s all just bullshit and there were like seven different people all making different Twitter replacements and Threads beat them all because of monopolism. Well, monopolism and the stupid mistakes of their competitors with all this beta invite bullshit like it’s 2004 and they’re Gmail and network effects don’t matter. Shit I just got a bluesky invite, finally, yesterday from when I signed up the week it went online. I’ve already been on there thanks to an invite from a friend, but JESUS.
I suppose it’s not their fault, Meta funded Threads in a way that was impossible for any competitor to match — especially since all the VCs in the Valley still have a crush on Elon.
Gah. It’s all so stupid.
Talked to my sister on the phone yesterday, saw my mom and aunt in person, bought them groceries, talked to my daughter and wife it’s like I’m an actual Family Man just like Nitzer Ebb sang about.
Hrm maybe don’t go read those lyrics.
Jane didn’t want to get up this morning, didn’t want to pee, was sad that it was me doing morning instead of mommy. She said “I don’t want you” and “I wish you were mommy” and of course I felt that rejection sadness that parents know they shouldn’t feel and they do their best to keep in perspective. BUT then she said, and I quote, “I mean don’t get me wrong I love you,” and YES. My daughter rules. Also I looked at the newsletter from the school and today was pajamas day so in the end I didn’t actually have to convince her to put clothes on, which was proving to be impossible, so that was a win. Tomorrow she has PE, though, and she’s going to be a nightmare because in PE they’re always playing games where you attack people and things and she is a gentle soul. So that will be fun. Also I have an orthopedics appointment at 9:15 so I doubt I’ll get a GMMHAY in. Will they be able to do anything about my nine-minth case of tennis elbow? I doubt it.
But hey, one must keep trying. You gotta always keep trying, with the doctors. That is the thing. Nine will be useless, but eventually one will help. Just keep going. Please. I beg you.
Justa mix today, old and new. Still v. excited the Prunes are on Spotify. Now I can continually bitch that Curve’s Doppelgänger isn’t. Just ridiculous. New Bar Italia is good I didn’t care much for the last one. Love this Les Big Byrd band they are my current obsession. Oh and this new (ish) Annie Hamilton but I mentioned that yesterday.
Over and out. I would not expect a GMHHAY tomorrow. I will try. But there’s not a lot of time between school drop-off and orthopedics. Mayhaps.
So true about doctors BTW. I’ve been complaining about back and groin pain all year and finally had to basically diagnose my own inguinal hernia, which I recently confirmed with a CT scan I paid for out of pocket after being dismissed by my doctor for months and told I’m “just getting old” and “need to work on my core strength.” This is after me giving plenty of indications for months and months that, IMHO, should have strongly suggested a diagnosis.
I really dislike BlueSky and have from the start. It’s got crypto bro BS written all over it. As much as I dislike Meta, I’m glad the impetus is shifting toward Threads.