Good morning. Hello. How are you? #358
Doctor's office waiting rooms, Infrastructure & Mitch, MrBeast's Creative Juice, watching shit, and the impossibility of being good.
Good morning. Hello! How are you? I am pretty good. I have today off. There is a beautiful sunrise right now. I am going to go to the garden center, which is very exciting. I’ve got another doctor’s appointment for mom, which is not very exciting. Though it’ll be better than the one yesterday. Well, that’s not fair. The one yesterday had the advantage of being very quick — we were in and out of there in 40 minutes or so — but the waiting room of that particular clinic (the tenth distinct UNC clinic building I’ve been in, ignoring the central hospital campus I’ve not been to since Jane was born) had the most dreary waiting room. Like… Penn Station dreary. In an otherwise newish, nice building. One giant waiting room in the center of a large floor plan, with all the offices surrounding the waiting room and this getting all the windows. I’m sure this made for nicer exam rooms (or doctor’s offices), but the waiting room was devoid of natural light. Just very poor architectural design. This isn’t the first UNC clinic with poor design decisions around waiting rooms — there’s one waiting area in the brand-new 100 East Towne that is hugely problematic — but it was definitely the worst. But today’s appointment is with a good doctor, at a clinic with a nice waiting room. So, we have that going for us today.
So it looks like they’re going to go ahead and just call the infrastructure bill a reconciliation bill. They don’t really have a choice, since Mitch said — without a trace of irony or acknowledgement of his idiocy — that a) republicans want infrastructure, b) debt is bad, c) taxes are bad. I mean, I don’t really think Mitch is a MMT adherent, though he is certainly talking like one. Because otherwise I’m pretty sure you pay for that infrastructure you want with either taxes or borrowing (at zero interest rates!) That dude really does count on everyone around him being craven or stupid. For anyone who thinks he’s a political mastermind, I submit that the last three months have proven to be evidence to the contrary. Saying on day one you’re not going to support a bill is so much less nefarious than the way he handled health care in the Obama years, and pretended that republicans were going to help, and ran out the clock and reduced the bill’s potency. He totally could have gotten away with that again. Biden was sitting there asking him to. Now they’re gonna do reconciliation instead and don’t need his votes. I remain skeptical on how certain aspects of this bill will get through reconciliation, but it seems quite possible they’ll just adjust the size of what does get through to keep the bill the same size. Maybe I’m just Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer here, but I don’t see how there’s any brilliance at all to Mitch’s strategy.
I watched this veerrrry interesting video by a gentleman named Epos Vox. I’ve been subscribed to him for some time — most of the pandemic. Calls himself The Stream Professor. Does tutorials on how to stream, as well as great reviews on microphones, webcams and the like. This video was different, however. It was a scathing takedown of a new initiative by Mr Beast, who is a 22 year-old YouTube star, who is, sadly, as far as I know, completely unrelated to the much cooler Mr. Beast, the album by Mogwai. Anyway, Mr Beast has started a new sort-of-investment-fund, soft-of-incubator for aspiring YouTube stars. It seems pretty cool on the face of it, Mr Beast will invest $25,000 to $250,000 and take “a 10% stake” (whatever that means) in your career. How do you take a stake in a human being? Who knows! I have heard of this being done once, but it was a 1:1 relationship - one human investing in another. But, it turns out, this is not what this is. First off, it’s not just Mr Beast but it’s Mr Beast and a bunch of other high-view YouTubers who, Epos Vox points out, all make a lot of videos “about making a bunch of money.” I am a little disappointed because Shelby Chuch is involved. Church is another YouTuber who does very much make videos about making money, but I enjoy her videos. The funnest part of it is she’s like 24, not actually very good at making a lot of money, but still probably makes more money than I do, so who am I to judge? I enjoy the paradox.
Anyway, if this was just Mr Beast (to whom I do not subscribe, but know of and have seen his videos they are not my thing), Shelby Church and a few other white (they’re all white), aggro male (the rest are male) money-making YouTubers, I guess that’s one thing. But the next thing Epos Vox points out is that this whole thing is VC backed. There are four VC firms listed on the bottom of the website. Now, two of these firms I know personally, and all four by reputation and they are hardly a cohort of terrible VC firms. But the whole thing introduces so many more questions. Who’s investing in you? Who are you beholden to? Beast et al? Beast and the VCs? The VC’s LP investors? Who knows! It doesn’t say.
And then it gets better. Vox (is this a last name? No idea!) points out another person involved, hidden away from the front page: Scooter Braun! Duh duh dummmmm. Taylor Swift’s archnemesis! A man primarily known for screwing over creators.
Amazing.
Vox also wisely points out that the whole thing smells like a backdoor deal to becoming one of those “studios” of YouTube channels that were so hot for a while there but then imploded cuz they kinda sucked.
What I wanna know, though: this whole thing started with a tweet from Mr Beast:
So. What happens on the backend here. Mr Beast and his cohort have bought 10% of your channel. Dude has explicitly said he wants to buy shares. Is this 10% of your life now a fungible asset? Is there a plan for a second side to this marketplace where Scooter Braun is selling off your 10% to the highest bidder? Or it’s being arbitraged? or traded? Who knows!
It’ll be super fun to take a gander at the contracts.
Some other things I watched in the last few days (uh oh I am starting to do round-ups I swore I wouldn’t do round-ups):
A fantastic live performance by Weather Station: you only need to watch the first song if you like, it’s just sublime and perfect.
Oh I watched Godzilla vs Kong “opening night” from the comfort of my own home. I have seen all three previous films in this “saga” but I could barely say with any confidence what happened in the previous ones, except for the fact that they leveled Boston in one of them and it was kinda sad but also kinda satisfying to watch. I’m fairly certain there are maybe 10 people, tops, on the planet that could say what exactly happened in all four of the films in this shared universe, and that includes people who have worked on them. This was not a good film, but it was fun to watch and it was not a bad film. The first Godzilla is still the best of the four if you want my opinion, someone who has never watched a Godzilla film before these, except for the animated cartoon in the 70’s with Godzuki god I loved that guy.
Then last night we watched some more of this animated show on Hulu called The Great North. Emma and I had watched the first two episodes when they were in preview, but now the whole first season is out. The cast is stellar. I mean, it’s just a fantastic cast: Nick Offerman, Jenny Slate, Alanis Morissette, Will Forte. Ron Funches showed up this week (everything is better with Ron Funches). There is a new, custom, episode-specific song at the end of each episode that is brilliant. And, you know, takes place in Alaska so we can pause the episode and then have a long conversation about Arctic Entryways and the probably heating system of the bar they’ve been in. But sadly the actual plot of each episode is just not that funny. There are a couple brilliant one-liners in each episode, but… everything just doesn’t gel. Also one episode was kind of a rip-off of that Deep Space 9 episode with Self-Sealing Stem Bolts, so. Yeah. Though I guess that sort of story (barter chains) could potentially turn into something like Groundhog Day, where lots of people are allowed to take a spin at it. Sure. Okay. I’m down with that.
Change of topic: It’s so hard being a good person. Like impossibly hard. Like maybe you manage to pull off the table stakes and are polite and kind and not hitting on people unnecessarily and you are helpful and positive and whatnot. Never mind that those table stakes are insanely hard. But where do you go from there? The thing about being good is you can always be better, and you can always be doing more good. Every ounce of your personal life, of your personal time? It could all be spent doing more good. It would be, of course, a complete self-negation, but that’s really the only logical end state of trying to be as good as one can, right? Like is there a moral defense for not doing that? Even though none of us do that? I think about this all the time. It could be argued that the only way I view life is through the prism of knowing that I could be more good, but I’m not bothering being more good, because I am not more good. And I know all the mental tricks and rationalizations for not being more — I suspect we all do, because we are all using them, all the time. But they’re all kind of BS aren’t they. (Note the use of a period there, not a question mark). Yes. They are BS.
I’ve been kind of snappy lately, a little cranky — pretty exhausted from work and work and kid and pandemic and mom — and I tend to take it out in a healthy way, or at least the least destructive way I can, which is to tell talking heads on TV that they are full of shit. Emma is pretty sick of it. Rachel Maddow or AOC will be on the TV saying something and I’ll be all like “NOPE.” Not because I disagree with their politics and am turning into a Fox News Q Shaman or something, no, just, like, nitpicking the reality of what they’re saying. And recently someone said “he we’re all trying our best” and, to poor Emma, who Does Not Need This Shit, I am like “this is complete BS we are not all doing our best, most people aren’t doing their best at all,” and, yeah, maybe I could linguistically argue this point when I’m in a better mood, but Jesus, Rick. Let it go.
Because I am not very good at trying my best, or being the most good (two different things). And it constantly eats at me. It’s nice when someone says to me “hey you’re just trying your best” but, nah. I’m not. I could be doing better. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
OKAY. Mix. Let’s get out of here and to a garden center. Hopefully it’ll cheer me up. And WOW is it getting sunny out there.
We have lots of other mixes that aren’t just mixes almost ready, and even a few that are, but I’ve been excited about this one for a week or so because the run of the first seven? ten? no man, this whole mix. It’s one of the best ones in a while. Starts strong, keeps on going. I am very excited about it. I was talking to some friends about this School of Fish song on Zoom last weekend and a lot of people my age don’t remember School of Fish. Jussi and I think it might be a regional thing. And I remember at the time hearing a rumor that the singer in the band (or maybe someone else and I just assumed it was the singer) was the son of the CEO of their record label so they didn’t have an cred, but it’s hard to find any evidence of this on the internet these days, so that may have just been a pre-internet Urban Legend. It’s a good song, though. I love a good one hit wonder that didn’t even, really, have a single hit. Just an “almost” hit.
Anyway, I have an insanely busy day with the morning errands, mom’s doctor’s appointment, and somewhere in there I aspire to get my podcast done so I can clear the decks for the weekend for nothing but gardening and hanging with our visitors, which is very exciting. So it may be a bit before I get to the comments. But this doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Here have some buttons.
1. i've just accepted that i'm a terrible person who's getting better in increments. is it the best i can do? no. BUT probably better than most for even thinking about small ways to be better. 2. i loved that school of fish song! it was on heavy rotation on FNX, so yeah, maybe it was a local hit for a not-local band (LA).
Dammit. Forgot the Playlist link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1YVUuwigZhICuTLpQqaYFP?si=kwWvGN3NTSSC3kvFoyhcLA