Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1049
I have made an important invention, three different favors to ask of you, NYPD BS, just a smidge of tech BS, important butter update, Utqiagvik sunset, what is this stake
Hello! Morning! Two more days to Thanksgiving! Yay! Obviously don’t go in for all that colonialism shite but I do love a holiday where you sit down and list all the things for which you are thankful, can’t go wrong with that.
No major movements on Silicon Valley dumbery — everyone tells me MSFT can’t buy OpenAI because of Antitrust concerns, but were I Satya I’d go for it anyway. Lina has enough on her plate, and in the end they will only focus on Activision or OpenAI, not both. Certainly worth a roll of the dice to lock everything in amber for a year or so. Giant breakup fee to Sam personally, as much as I, Rick Webb, loathe that idea. But no movement. We shall see. And as for Elon, he is now suing people for saying things because he believes in free speech. Coo, coo.
Also I made some Threads commentary that got some traction and commented on by a prominent VC and shit and then a bunch of actual AI stans came out of the woodwork to make very intelligent comments and.. my god. AI has stans. Lord help us. It’s like Three Body Problem with those lunatics trying to actively kill the human race.
The NYPD is spending a little under $400 million to encode their police broadcasts because of course they are, they are going to spend our taxpayer money to hide things from us. No, I do not live in NYC anymore, but I still pay taxes there, dad gummit, so I get to comment on these things. The NYPD is the worst. It is amazing to me they still don’t actually pay for their own fines, the city does. Take that shit out of their retirement fund.
Four hundred million. To hide their broadcasts from the public. Jesus.
Anyway, lack of tech updates means we get to get back to what you know and love about GMHHAY: Pedestrian stuff!
Had some pretty relentless money stress dreams, callbacks to when I’d go to that specific ATM on Harvard Ave in Allston because it was the only one to give out $5 bills. Did not love that dream half as much as I loved that period of my life.
Transunion’s website is broken and I called them last night and was on hold for twenty minutes and they said it’d be working this morning, but it isn’t and it is fucking me up. Man, this whole freezing my credit thing is always a giant pain whenever i need even the tiniest thing from the financial world. Love it.
Important butter update for longtime readers: we are in the season where the butter is hard because it’s cold. And this year I moved the butter to the kitchen island, and it did not help. So I ascertained it is not, in fact, because of poor insulation in our walls, but rather because my wife keeps the house ungodly cold in the winter. Or, at least too cold to keep nice, soft butter. Amazingly, if I throw a petulant manchild fit and turn the temperature up two degrees, the butter softens. One would think that I, as a native Alaskan, could handle 68 degrees in the house, which I distinctly remember was the temperature we kept our house in the winter when I was a child, but one would think wrong. In my defense, I am losing weight and I am always cold when I’m losing weight. Hrm. Maybe I should diet in the summer.
Speaking of Alaska, yesterday was sunset in Utqiagvik, Alaska, fka Barrow, where my father as born. The sun will stay set for 70 ish days. Bring on the vampires.
Here is an important update on my amazing invention you may have forgotten about because I only mentioned it once: buttons for touch screens in cars. Well, I have found a product on Amazon that more or less solves my problem, though it is not 100% perfect. I mean, it kind of is. What they are are stick-on buttons that gamer kids (I assume they’re kids) use to put on their phone and make a joystick out of the button area on a game. Here. Check them out. They aren’t quite right, because they move around a bit inside their circle, but they really do the job. It’s kind of amazing. The other problem is that they cover up the button, of course, which is fine for me, but if someone else drives my truck, they won’t know what the buttons do. SO. In an ideal world, they would come with little white decals of things like cameras and vents and heated chairs and whatnot, and you could stick the right decal on the right button — sort of like spice racks and jars have with them.
Anyway, the things are life changing. They are so good. I mean they totally make it so I can turn on the AC and change the temperature and fan speed without fumbling around and nearly killing everyone while I drive my three ton (electric, environmentally friendly) monstrosity off the road.
I am considering abandoning my whole professional life to improve these, and market them to the world because I suspect every single person with a touch screen hates that they can’t find any buttons. BUT the one limitation, of course, is that they can only work in situations where the buttons on the screen do not move. Which is probably rare, huh? But not always? The buttons I’ve used it on on mine do not move.
Could you do me a favor and let me know if you have button areas on your touch screen that do not change? Need to do some market research here.
While I’m on the subject of favors, could you tell Emma and I what this stake is? It is in the ground in the moss yard of the guest house. Maybe some sort of surveyor’s mark? But it’s in the middle of the lot, nowhere near a property line. Maybe it’s a USGS mark? Inquiring minds want to know.
And also while I’m on the subject of favors, do any of our Boston friends know anyone who can install a Nest Thermostat for us? We also need to move it over like eight feet. I could do this, but it would be better to get this installed in the next couple weeks before the apartment starts getting a bunch of holiday use.
I got my mom’s medical procedure scheduled, about four days after they were going to leave was the soonest I could get an appointment, and I am pretty annoyed. But my mom and aunt weren’t that annoyed, they just extended their trip a week. Given that that the high and low in Fairbanks are -4°F and 7°F right now, I can’t say I blame them. Anyway, that is all sorted. Thank you for your time and attention in this manner.
Daddy bedtime last night, Jane was great. She did teeth and jammies early so we could do bed party, which is, as you recall, a series of elaborate games performed on the bed — old standards like jumping and pillow fight but also “pretend you’re a table,” and “kick daddy’s arm as far as I can and daddy judges it on a scale of 1 to 10” except now she’s not kicking it so much as dropping it backwards in an effort to get a negative score. Elaborate scenes enacted with stuffies (still hate that word). There is a new stuffy on the scene, a duck named Quack Quack, and he’s really shaking things up.
Then dance party which was, I shit you not, three Taylor songs and two Blackpink songs. I mean, at least we got one Olivia? God. I tried to get her to watch a live performance of Nick Cave and the band Die Haut doing their seminal hit “Truck Love,” but this did not fly.
BUT! This morning: a) super fast on getting ready, no complaints, b) she brushed her teeth! c) she remembered her library books, and d) in the car we were listening to “Far too Frail” by Skinny Puppy and she said it was “pretty good” and then she said she “did not like this” to Head and the Heart but she didn’t mind “Fell on Black Days” by Soundgarden.
So, you know, not a total loss.
Last day of school for five days. Jane is excited to help me making thanksgiving. I give her a 50% shot of being helpful. We will see. We will see.
Here have a psych rock playlist for today. Been thinking about Slift all week man they are a great band they have a live set up on KEXP and it is so good. And thank you for the Chrome recommendation, Bill. Real nostalgic throwback to kick things off. Those were the days.