Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1099
Another sick day for Jane, Vision Pro prescription limits, that Gibson X-Files episode, bands and capitalization, a long adtech rant about ML & AI
Good morning! Hello! Greetings from the play room. Jane is still sick. Well, she is much better, but her tummy still hurts, so after long discussions last night, we decided she shouldn’t go to school again today, because who cares, school is a construct, maaaaan. She was very sad about it, man that girl loves school. It is our burden and curse and blessing. But now she is in front of the XBox playing the Lego Movie Game because I am a super awesome, all-pro parent who is very dilligent about screen time, those evil things that gave both her parents careers. Man will I ever, ever accept that “diligent” has one L. Stupidest spelling awards nominee 2024. Back on topic, she has held down her food for three bland meals now, and hasn’t puked in over 24 hours, so we are definitely out of the woods out of the woods out of the woods out of the woods out of the woods out of the woods my god that song has no bridge and I don’t mean that in a good way. I mean it kind of does but go ahead and compare that anemic non-bridge with the bridge in something like “Call Your Girlfriend” and tell me Jack Antonoff deserves to be pop producer king. You want an even worse non-bridge? Listen to “Green Light” by Lorde. Seriously what was he thinking. He pretty much ruined that song. Back on topic, I am working from the playroom today on a laptop and it sucks I don’t know how or why people do this all the time, the screen is too small and it is annoying.
Some housekeeping items:
The new album by The Smile is, in fact, their second studio album. I stand corrected. Never even heard the first one, though I suppose that is the one that has the songs that were played at that Montreaux Jazz Festival set I mentioned. Thank you Jon for alerting me to this mistake.
After a call from Apple, and four support emails from Zeiss, I was finally told of an online Zeiss lens prescription checker. It is actually really handy if you are blind like me, and now I know the actual, real prescription limits for lenses that can go into the Apple Vision Pro, at least on the myopia side, and the limit is -10.25. This isn’t that far off from my prescription and I kinda want to see if my doctor will give me a prescription for that strength, grind some lenses to that strength and make an appointment at the Apple Store, stick ‘em in and see if it works. Because I gotta admit, after watching the Verge, Wall Street Journal, and both MKBHD reviews, I still pretty much want the dumb thing. All logic tells me to wait a year for v2, and I probably will, if not longer, but man. Something calls to me. Every review is like ‘it’s an amazing machine but you’re all alone inside of it” and I immediately think “sounds great! Isolate me from the world!" Take me away!” It is not rational. I just think of that old X-Files episode written by William Gibson about a dude hooked up to VR and the net via a “T3 connection” in a trailer park. This scene was most definitely not an aspirational one, but rather a horror scene, but so what. Hook me up. Tune in drop out.
At least for a few hours a week.
Man T3 lines. They were so fast. Dreamed of having a T3 line. The thing was 45Mbps. Inconceivable. He says while sitting in an easy chair with a wireless connection to the internet at 550Mbps.
Remember the invention of Wifi? The first time you could sit on your couch with your laptop and watch a movie? On your porch? Magic.
Man this stuff used to be so cool.
Maybe that’s why I am sort of compelled by the Vision Pro. The other major flags planted on the ground of the future by the tech industry of late have been so dystopian. Cybertrucks and idiot robots. The Vision Pro is the only thing that tried to indicate an optimistic future. I mean, obviously screens over all of our eyes and the dissociation it represents are not necessarily optimistic, but the industrial design is, the intent is, the goal is optimistic. And that ad they made really goes for it.
Vision Pro. It’s not Blade Runner it’s Geordi LaForge.
Anyway (good word). I was watching Youtube the other day, and the amazing Bradley of Bradley’s Almanac did a batch post of a bunch of live stuff. I am deeply thankful for Bradley’s YouTube Channel, because he goes to almost every live show in Boston that I would go to were I still to live there. So I got to see the recent much-acclaimed Buffalo Tom performance at the Peabody Essex museum. That was great.
But then he also posted some videos of this new band Ian Sweet. Now, this was interesting for two reasons. First, it was just earlier that day that I “discovered” Ian Sweet. I had heard one song earlier and liked it enough to throw the album in my queue. And on that day, this last Monday, I listened to the whole record and thought “yeah that record’s great.” And then later that evening, boom, Ian Sweet live videos on Youtube from my old friend Bradley.
BUT! When I listened to Ian Sweets album on Youtube, I made note of their Capitalization. On Spotify, the album is credited to IAN SWEET, all caps. And as long-time readers know, I have to pay attention to these things because I log all of the albums I listen to in a giant note each year. And I had already had a GMHHAY topic item in mind about this — because it really feels like more and more new bands are fucking with capitalization. Most of them are going all lower case, but a lot are going all upper case as well. Had a real batch of them of late, with bands such as IAN SWEET, mood room, AVTUMNE, SLIFT, crushed, deary, and bar italia all being in rotation for me in January. And I had half a mind to write some sort of curmudgeonly item in GMHHAY about this and the kids these days and how this is not transgressive and ee cummings and whatnot.
BUT! On Bradley’s Youtbe channel, on the Ian Sweet live set, they have a banner behind them as they’re playing their set, and the banner does not say “IAN SWEET,” like their album is stylized on Spotify, but rather it says “ian sweet.”
So what is up with that?! Do capitals mean nothing now? I mean, on the one hand, cool. This is a different approach to transgressive capitalization than cummings and his ilk undertook in the mid-century, so props to the kids these days, but also WTF! Stand for something other than anarchy! This is a society!
Old man shakes fist at cloud.
(Also I just noticed it was not, in fact, Bradley who posted this video but rather a Youtuber named joelrchan, to whom I subscribe because he was the only dude to shoot video at that first American Wet Leg show I went to at Mercury Lounge a few years back but that does not detract from this story does it)
(Jane is playing the scene where Wildstyle and Emmet pretend to be robots to infiltrate Lord Business’ evil lair, and there is a ton of new, additional dialogue from Elizabeth Banks and Chris Pratt and it is kind of amazing and hilarious).
Oh shit new Red Right Hand files dropped.
My feet are cold.
Did a call the other day in my day job. Another adtech exec, we’re exploring ways to work together, and I swear to f**king god, I have no idea what this dude is saying. I mean, part of it is he’s on the supply side and we’re on the demand side, but I’m used to that. It’s just… endless jargon. And it’s, like, shareholder jargon. Like the shit analysts say that don’t really truly get how the industry works. A focus on “signals” and data that is very recherche these days.
I swear to god. Mostly, AI and my little Adtech ghetto are nicely separated, but the people who want to bridge the two are sad and terrifying and lost in their little world. Like Machine Learning and GPTs are both just two sides of the “hoover up as much data as you can” coin, and what’s worse is that in the old days, at least people were hoovering up data with some sort of point of view as to why. Like it’s one thing to say “we want to know if your users are into ponies or Mesothelioma or travel, because we sell services to such people.” Is it great? No, not especially. But it is a damn site better than “who knows! Just suck up as much data as possible and feed it into the computer that will mysteriously decide with no discernible logic which ad opportunities are better. The computer needs more more more!”
Do. Not. Like.
And also none of this actually relates to publishers, because publishers don’t care. They just want the highest bid. You could tell them you are bidding the most because a witch told you to, and they’ll be like “fine, no problem. If it’ll help your witch bid more in the future, we’ll give her a tour.”
The saddest part is that there will be winner and loser publications — pubs who sell more ads, and pubs who sell less — and it will all be because of these mysterious AI/ML algorithms. No one will know why they are a winner or loser pub, no one will know what they can do to change from being a loser to a winner. Maybe, if all the AI/ML buying algorithms agree, we’ll be able to glean through observation some common traits amongst the winners, but maybe not! Maybe the various ML algorithms won’t even agree!
This is all really dumb!
Woah that was just going to be a rant about the overuse of jargon in business — something more universal that my entire audience could care about. But I guess I went niche. Sorry.
Anyway (good word) Jane is stuck and can’t figure out how to get out of the robot lair. I should probably help her. She is feeling despondent. It is really cute.
Almost got a pieta-like shot here it was gonna be so good. But Jane moved.
Today’s Media of the Day is this Diet Cig song, because I’ve been singing it for two days because Jane’s stomach hurts. She does not like me singing it and keeps asking me to stop. She does like the video, though. Got to see Diet Cig once at Hotel Vegas in Austin and it was so awesome I miss that place so much.
At least I have the shirt.
Until tomorrow, my fine fellows. Wait, shit, is “fellows” gendered?