Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1133
New Mary Chain, 3 Body Problem anxiety, visiting friend, Meta vs EU pricing, consumer choice in personalized ads, Apple's original sin in ads, AVP light seal surprise, a lot of music stuff
Good morning! Friday! Happy Glasgow Eyes day. The new album by the Jesus and Mary Chain. I am listening to it right now. The Jesus and Mary Chain are currently rehearsing for their tour in Mogwai’s studio in Glasgow, which makes sense. Man. That must be exciting to have a band of Glaswegian rock legends practicing in your practice space. I once had a band of Glaswegian experimental rockers of near-legendary status rehearsing in my practice space, and it was VERY exciting, let me tell you. Well chuffed, Mogwai must be.
It is also 3 Body Problem day, which makes me nervous AF. I have written extensively about the inherent Chineseness of the books, and I don’t see how they can be adapted to western culture without the whole thing losing some of its thematic heft. But I could be wrong. I did not anticipate Watchmen using the Tulsa Race Riots, so perhaps Benihana and Wyatt can find some historical moment in Western history to replace (ugh) the Chinese revolution. Maybe the HUAC or something. I don’t know. But, then, I guess I don’t really care, because I have already gotten the perfectly serviceable 3Body, the Chinese adaptation, and I love it way more than it has any right to be loved, so who cares, I guess.
We will write about this way more than any of you are gonna want to hear at a later date — 3 Body is the new Taylor Swift — so we’ll just put a pin in that for now.
We had a visitor yesterday! For, like, five hours! Our friend Ashley from Boston was in town for work. Different Ashley from Boston visiting us than last month when Ashley from Boston visited us. It was great. She got the royal GMHHAY tour and saw all of the hallowed landmarks you all know and love: the greenhouse, the trails, the studio-in-progress, the playset, the pond, the Lightning, she drove past the Walmart. She oddly declined my invitation to go to the Walmart, but, you know, to each their own. She met one of the pool partners. And Ashley is very good with kids. It is very impressive. Remember that restaurant Jane absolutely would not go to last week? Well Ashley convinced her to go no problem. And she liked it. And she even ate a quesadilla with white cheese in it. My god. The world. It’s changing.
Had another unfortunate, against-my-will Threads mini-viral hit the other day. Such are the perils of talking about Serious Things on the internet. People will want to engage with you in a way that they do not when you talk about greenhouses and grocery runs. Can you embed a Thread into Substack yet? Or is Substack still pissy they didn’t win the great Twitter Replacement wars? Let’s see.
https://www.threads.net/@rickwebb/post/C4wiRRjrMD0
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NOPE.
Substack is so innovative.
(But nice job on the embed code export, Threads).
Okay fine (channeling Scotty in Star Trek IV again). Let’s go old school with a screenshot.
Anyway, a certain class of people is very angry with me pointing out this demographic reality: most people do not give AF about “their personal data” being used for advertising. Also “their personal data” is such a scare quote. But anyway, yes. People do not want to pay for every single app they use. They will happy accept ads to get it for free. They will accept personalized ads. A large — shockingly large — percentage of people prefer the ads to be personalized. It is weird to me that any of these facts surprise anyone.
Now, to be clear, I am not one of those people! I pay for shit tons of stuff! If there is an ad-free option, I will take it! I tried a lot at Timehop to get an ad-free option, but we were a very small team, and the tech people convinced me it was too laborious to maintain two code forks with one team.
All of this comes up because Facebook is trying to get the EU to let them charge people who don’t accept ads. I am simplifying here, Eric Seufert et al don’t @ me. They are effectively haggling now with the EU about how much they can charge.
Facebook is evil, Apple is borderline evil, but evil and borderline evil companies can sometimes do good things, we all contain multitudes, and Trump’s China — well, never mind about that. But here, in this instance, I think Facebook is fighting the good fight. I believe with every app, everyone should get a choice: do you want to pay for this, or get it for free with ads? I think most people would like to have that choice. And I think most people will choose both options in different situations. I would not pay for Facebook. But I would pay for Threads. We, as consumers, should be allowed to have these choices. I also believe it is absolutely insane for governments to insist that companies offer their services for free to people. I’m not saying any government is currently doing this, but boy does GDPR come close, and reasonable people can (and have!) interpreted it this way. It should not be interpreted this way. It should be interpreted as a consumer control law, not an options limiting law.
BTW there is a super-interesting confluence of pricing strategies going on right now: the historical television pricing strategy of dual revenue streams (Cable fees plus ad revenue) beginning to overlap with app pricing strategies, which have historically been hella distorted by Apple. Apple takes a giant fucking cut of subscription revenue from apps, but not ad revenue.
This, by the way, is Apple’s painful original sin when it comes to advertising: they go on and on about how awful ads are, except they made the app ecosystem this way by taking a 30% cut of subscription revenue but not ad revenue. It is a giant distortion at the genesis and heart of the app ecosystem and they are entirely responsible for tilting the playing field towards ad-supported.
I felt bad talking about music for a bunch of days and I got a bunch of new stranger subscribers so, you know, I gotta, like, remind people I do have a job.
Speaking of paying for content, I did my taxes yesterday and oh my god do I spend a lot of money on records. How much? I am embarrassed to tell you. But suffice it to say no one can gimme shit about my Spotify and Apple Music subscriptions, because I guarantee you that I am giving artists plenty of money already. I will say thank god Discogs does not give you exact timing on how long ago you added a record to your collection. So I cannot tell you exactly how many records I bought last year. I will say, though, when I got to page ten of my discogs collection, it was still saying “added about one year ago,” so, yeah.
God I hope my wife isn’t reading this paragraph. Hi honey I love you.
Speaking of Apple, I ordered my Vision Pro lens inserts, the absolute strongest lenses Zeiss will consent to make. They will be here this week. But it turns out that Apple also requires someone with my prescription to use a different piece of the AVP called a “light seal.” I am not entirely sure what this thing is or why I need a different one than the one that comes with the AVP, but it cost an extra $200. Here is the box.
In all of my watching of a bajillion AVP review videos on YouTube, not one reviewer mentioned this, because not one of them is blind like me. I did not know about this added expense, or this weird extra piece. To the blind contingent of GMHHAY readers, I offer this info up so you are forewarned.
$200 for a piece of fabric. Cool, cool.
And this is coming from someone who bought the wheels (worth it).
Gonna wrap up with some music talk here. Bought Olivia tickets for Boston, very excited. It is the night before Young Fathers at the Sinclair, very exited for that too. Any Bostonians I know going to Young Fathers? It is going to rule. Charlie Parr was Wednesday night and McCluskey was last night, both in the small room at Cat’s Cradle and my god that venue is amazing. Small room is about the size of TTs old room. Or maybe Mercury Lounge. Why did I not go to these shows. Unwound is tonight in the big room, though. Definitely going to that. And yes, in one hour and twenty-one minutes I am going to try and buy Pulp tickets for NYC even though I probably won’t go in the end. We shall see, we shall see.
Speaking of Olivia, last night I watched a Tiny Desk concert by someone named Chappell Roan and she was amazing and turns out she is opening for Olivia in Boston so that is very exciting.
Oh and Conrad alerted me to this article by my neighbor Jon Wuster, reviewing a recent Bob Dylan show in Charlotte. I saw Bob Dylan in Charlotte maybe six, seven years ago, and I experienced exactly what Jon is describing here:
These current concerts feature almost all of his most recent album, and a handful of album tracks and covers a casual listener wouldn’t recognize. It’s almost diabolical when you think about it. But that unique mix of free spirit survivor and flagrant contrarian is what’s so inspiring about Dylan. Most people his age are in the ground, yet he’s out there giving some of the best, weirdest performances of his career. It’s kind of the most punk thing anyone has ever done.
Except I was not as close and am not as good of a musician as Jon, so I did not notice how brilliant the musicians are. I just saw an absolutely impenetrable morass of confusion, and then for three minutes the most transcendent, perfect version of “Tangled Up in Blue” that haunts me to this day. But I appreciate this way of thinking about it. Dylan is doing an entire tour like those early Mary Chain shows where they played nothing but a wall of noise for 15 minutes, backs to the audience for 15 minutes
Like how I brought it back to the Mary Chain? Just finished the album. It’s good. Not as good as the last one but has a lot to like about it.
Okay Ima gonna go. Gotta go to recycling and Walmart before the Pulp onsale. I had a whole other Apple rant about the DOJ suit but I am gonna read the entire actual suit this weekend like a grown-up before I comment on it, so you GMHHAY readers will know you’re getting the real dirt.
Media of the Day is Re-TROS, or Rebuilding the Rights of Statues, a chinese post-punk band who do the theme to the Chinese version of 3 Body Problem. They are freakin great, sort of a mix of Trans Am and the more mellow Mogwai parts. This song is not indicative of their output and I was tempted to put the whole album here, but this song gets stuck in my head all the time. Go ahead and top it, GoT boys.
See you Monday where I regale you with tales of greenhouses.
Missed this one as i was sick with a bug Friday, but re: Chappell Roan, my close family friend whom I've known since she was like 3 (and now recent college grad) tipped me off to Chappell Roan a few years ago. Insisted she was gonna be huge. Looking that way!