Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1144
Dreams, Real Wild Child is tomorrow, Jose Andres and Andres Freund, Twitter gripes, Google gripes, griping in general, new music
Good morning, mate. How are you? Boy I have been watching a lot of Bluey this week. Also read this excellent profile on Bluey and its creator in Bloomberg. Subscription required, sorry. But it’s interesting. Boy is Bluey huge. Boy did a lot of different people mess up and not buy the rights to Bluey. Poor Disney. Doesn’t own Bluey, building a freakin Avatar land instead.
Had a dream last night I got lost but in getting lost I discovered this beautiful new house, it was like a mix of New Mexico Earthship, high end McMansion, Frank Lloyd Wright. It had this amazing garden of hexoganal solar panels. It was built into a hill. It had cantilver construction with stone crenelations. It had a greenhouse and a garden. It was so cool and I have never seen anything like it in reality and I want it so bad. Alas.
Then I got stuck in an office park. Then we found a downed Star Destroyer and thai fighters started attacking the office park, which housed Oracle and Accenture.
Gawd.
I am feeling much better today, thanks. My wife insightfully commented that normal adults do not go out and get blisteringly drunk on work nights, especially when they have a lot of work the next day, and especially when they also have to care for their child the next morning. She is not wrong, but I submit to you that monstrous workload and childcare are why it seemed to be the right thing to do.
Before we get started, reminder about Real Wild Child, tomorrow afternoon evening! Bring your kids! It’s gonna be great. Click on the image for more info.
Today I gotta figure out my DJ situation for tomorrow at Man Ray. I have three options and none of them are great. The fact that my entire music collection is in Apple Lossless format is a bit of a problem, as nothing but Apple devices play the files, which means I cannot use the digital mixer that Man Ray has on its own. I could use two phones, and I am leaning toward this, but I then wouldn’t have a phone to take pictures. So the last option is to use a laptop or iPad with DJ software on it, which I have done before, but I am a simple man DJ and I just use a cross fader and don’t beat match or anything so it sometimes feels like overkill.
What to do, what to do.
Oh Jane has just completed a watercolor and stuck it in front of my screen. Here let’s get a picture of it.
Big smiles.
So we have a new hero in Andres Freund: the 38 year old PostgresSQL developer who noticed his times on logging into SSH was 500 miliseconds slower than normal and remembered some weird errors he had seen recently, did some digging, and discovered that a (probably) state actor had spent four years building trust in the open source community building up to eventually implanting a highly sophisticated backdoor into a key piece of the Linux OS. The software was in limited release and gearing up for widespread release, and Andres singlehandedly foiled the plan. Hats off, my man.
Speaking of Andres: José Andrés: Let people eat. How does this man not have the Nobel Prize yet. World Central Kitchen was one of the first teams on the ground, feeding the victims of the October 7 attacks by Hamas on Israeli citizens. They delivered meals to the hospitals where hostages were reunited with their families. I know this was a “mistake” but my blood boils, anew, again. Also, in this op-ed, Andres reveals that he was supposed to be with the WCK group that was killed in three successive missile strikes, on three different cars, that was an accident. I mean, the word “accident” seems to be doing some heavy lifting there. I do not doubt that Netanyahu himself did not get on the phone, villianously munching on a cigar, and tell some soldiers to gun down a bunch of aid workers. I do very much doubt that the people who launched the missiles didn’t know exactly who they were shooting missiles at. I suspect they convinced themselves that all aid workers are secretly working for Hamas, riddled with Hamas soldiers: as they have accused multiple other aid organizations. I believe more than one person in the chain of command believes that all aid workers are inextricably tied to the enemy. And I believe that leadership has given a shit ton of leeway to the commanders on the ground to select targets as they see fit.
And while this killing will get more coverage than most, a more “proper” investigation, like so many of the atrocities committed in Gaza, in the end I suspect we will never get a real answer. The horrors that have passed there in these last six months are going to drip droppingly be revealed over the next fifty years. I could live to a ripe old age, and secret atrocities that have been committed right now will still be coming to light.
It is hard to write about this stuff in a format such as GMHHAY because topic changes seem impossible. My Gen X gallows humor and low expectations and wry sarcasm are inadequate in the face of such death.
That being said, moving on: I went on Twitter the other day becsause I was at the end of the internet and I stupidly wanted to keep going. And my god, so many people I still respect are on there. It is… I can’t explain the feeling of isolation and rejection and sadness I have when I see a bunch of people I like and respect merrily Tweeting away while I am off in my Threads world for squares. It pains me personally. Irrationally. Like I should probably see a therapist over it.
I feel this every time I go there, and then I tell myself for my own health I need to never go there again, I need to forget who I saw Tweeting because I like them and they are my friends and they are good people. And so I do. I don’t go for months. And I successfully forget.
Eventually I successfully forget enough that I end up doing the whole thing all over again.
Ommmm…… Ellie Mystal’s actions are not about me. I am irrelevant. Ommmmm….
Oh here’s another one. You can get off Google! It’s totally doable! If you want the best experience and you are willing to pay $10 a month, use Kagi. If you don’t, use Ecosia or even Bing. It’s fine! They’re all better than Google. Well, Ecosia is mostly Google, but they give money to plant trees, so that is cool (Thank you Meghan for the hot tip).
C’mooon. We can all do this one simple thing. I mean, am I still stuck in the Google ecosystem with maps and Gsuite and, to a lesser extant, Google Docs? Yes. But I am doing what I can. Google’s monopoly isn’t in maps or docs or domains. It’s in search. Also their search is getting really bad! It’s just crazy! Why do we do this to ourselves? Listen to Kuato! Open your Mind!
Man I am ranting today I am sorry. I miss my garden.
One time I was arguing a lot on the internet with Andrew Krucoff, and Colin Nagy told me I had to go chill out and look at pictures of icebergs or something and it was really one of the wisest things anyone ever said and I spent like two hours on a Tumblr about icebergs and I felt so much better.
Oh hey Ghostly has reissues of the two Minecraft soundtracks by C418 in stock if you still haven’t gotten your hands on them. They really are fantastic records.
Oh shit its Friday and bandcamp Friday to boot. What else is new out there today? New Chappell Roan single, new Diiv, Rainbow Kitten Surprise w/Kacey Musgraves, the complete recordings of the Dream Academy remastered, oh heck is that new Broadcast??? Must investigate.
Oh yeah and new Adam Wiltzie solo — that is exciting. And Pink Floyd live at the BBC 1979.
Todays’ Media of the Day is the new Pet Shop Boys single, “Dancing Star,” because I am listening to it right now and it is catchy and a very simple pop song in a way the Pet Shop Boys usually do not quite do. Haven’t listened to all the lyrics yet so maybe it’s got some wry commentary in there or something but on first pass it seems pretty catchy and happy:
All right. Looks like we’re driving back to NC on Monday, so now GMHHAY Monday, Hopefully, I will do a special Sunday edition, but no promises. Ta.