Good morning. Hello. How are you? #393
Finishing the woke sci-fi series, Elon's Bitcoin adventures, Apple's hiring adventures, Scrivener 3, IRS/CFTA defunding, Chris and Rachel's handoffs, and SQUIRREL WAR
Good morning, there, friend! Hello! How are you doing this fine morning? I hope things are bearable this… what is it? Thursday? Things are good over here. The sun is shining over the pond, which has a light fog on it. It is very pretty. Here. Have a picture.
I got through the busy part of the week. I have one sales pitch meeting today, but it should be fine. And then it’s back to working on documents, which I love so, so much, Last document (well, it was like three back, but the last one everyone got to read) at work was a big hit, so that was nice. Who doesn’t love it when people enjoy your deliverables? Deliverables, man. Deliverables.
Finished the fourth and final book — The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers — in the woke sci-fi series I’ve been reading as comfort food. Man, it was just great. If I thought book three had no plot, this one had even less. Just fantastic. Human beings living their lives. It was basically like The Breakfast Club in space. People love The Breakfast Club. People love sci-fi. But we never mix the two. Well no more! Becky Chambers is here to fill the need you didn’t even know you had. Marvelous.
Speaking of space, the famous genius Elon Musk just learned, yesterday, that Bitcoin expends energy and is environmentally unsustainable, so he abruptly stopped accepting Bitcoin payment for Teslas and said that even though cryptocurrencies “had promise (n.b., they don’t), he wouldn’t be accepting them until there was one that used less than 1% of Bitcoin’s energy per transaction. I actually think this is potentially feasible if there was some cryptocurrency that had an OMRI-like organization, or even better a FINRA-like one that audited and confirmed that the electricity powering the machines was sustainably generated, but even then you’d have problems with the mass manufacture of GPU cards and solar panels just to run a million computers sending a 300+ gigabyte file back and forth over the internet, non-stop, forever. And, of course, their portion of the internet’s infrastructure would have to run on sustainable energy too, which means, in practice there would probably have to be a reliable, effect carbon offset program, and those are mostly a myth too. And then once you had all of that… congratulations, you’ve invented money again, only slower and more cumbersome to use.
Speaking of tech company reversals, Apple had decided to hire this guy who wrote a bestselling book that they, apparently, did not read, where he said a bunch of sexist stuff. The employees got really mad about it, and wrote a letter of protest. Within a few hours, Apple relented, and the guy was no longer working or going to work at Apple. I find all of this very interesting for a few reasons: first, it seems like if you’re going to hire someone who wrote a bestselling book, maybe read the book, or at least do some light googling, to make sure it doesn’t have a bunch of sexist shit in it? Seems… kinda table stakes for the HR department of a trillion dollar company. Not that HR departments seem to exist much anymore.
Second, I have read the book and, yeah, the guy was pretty sexist. A lot of it was written in the past tense, and I mean that more spiritually than technically. Like, yes a lot of it was written in the past tense, but it was also written from a viewpoint of a person who really didn’t live their life that way anymore. Yet there was no… sense of remorse? Or repentance? Like the dude was no longer a gonzo-inspired banker bro, and was mostly living a quiet life on a houseboat by the time he wrote the book, but he never really said “and that life was bad.” I wonder how much of a role this played. I wonder if he wrote an actual reckoning into the book it would have made a difference.
And thirdly, woke stuff aside, another thing I find very interesting about this guy, is this is the guy who built the early ancestors of FAN — aka Facebook Audience Network, aka Facebook’s ad auction system for advertising offsite of Facebook and around the web, aka the exact thing Apple is waging a massive technical, PR and advertising war against right now. The scuttlebutt is that this dude was working on the Apple advertising team.
I mean.
I mean.
Come on.
Jesus.
But Apple are the good guys.
Speaking of the good guys, the lovely people at Literature & Latte have released a new version of Scrivener, their book-writing software without which I cannot live (god that sentence construction is so dumb). Version 3. I am so excited. I’m also terrified. It’s like musicians being scared to update their OS because it might break their DAW in the middle of working on their album. Like… what if Scrivener 3 breaks something? but it has a new, improved, revamped, actual style system! Shiny new thing! I want it so bad. But I am forcing myself to wait at least a few weeks. But I want it so bad! So bad!
And if you are every considering writing a book, let me give you one piece of advice: Download Scrivener.
Speaking of so bad, I totally attacked a squirrel with the squirrel repellant yesterday and I feel awful about it, even though that squirrel was totally brazenly eating my tomato plants, up on my porch. It had rained for the last two days, and I hadn’t gotten around to re-applying the squirrel repellant. Emma spotted him chewing on my beautiful purple opal basil plant and the tomato plant I just planted to replace the other tomato this guy already ate (because all the squirrels in your back yard are secretly one single squirrel). So I marched up there with my pump sprayer and he got caught mid-snack. He ran and hid underneath the grill and I started spraying the plants. I was blocking the stairs and he knew he was cornered so he made a run for it right off the porch, flying into the air a good 20 feet above the ground, spreading his arms and legs to slow his fall. But before he got away I totally sprayed him with the squirrel repellant. I feel so bad. I am a bad person.
Also, that squirrel totally deserved it and maybe he will learn his lesson.
But I am so bad that was so evil.
But that basil plant is ruined and I am pissed. I have backups but that still sucks. Purple Opal Basil is the best.
Stupid squirrel.
So bad.
Speaking of so bad, an Indian client of mine needs some tax document from us. It’s like some weir document Americans don’t really use — something VAT related or something, I’m not sure, that’s not the point here — but the IRS knows Americans gotta do business with the rest of the world, so they have this service where you can send them some money and they will give you this document so you can send them to your overseas clients. So Kyu, our finance guy, was working on this, but I gotta sign the form. But: no e-signatures. But: you can sign the piece of paper and fax it to them, where they will only receive… your signature electronically. You can pay electronically, but you gotta do it by phone — this whole offering is clearly not connected to whatever payment system they use with your actual W2-based taxes. Or, of course, you can still mail a check and a piece of paper. Which is what we ended up doing, once I remembered I still have a few Timehop paper checks here at home that I remembered to grab, god, March of last year, the last time I was in the office. The IRS are crazy. I have a friend in Texas trying to work with them, but they won’t really talk to her because, as far as they’re concerned, her address doesn’t exist (fun fact: her address actually exists). I know the whole thing has been starved by Republicans for decades, but if Democrats cared, whenever they have control of things, like, right now, they could get some money to the IRS that would, like, tide them over through an evil republican administration. Biden seems to be doing that now, sort of. Hopefully it’s enough, hopefully they actually become, like, human, but given the way government computer upgrades go, I am… not optimistic.
Speaking of defunded government agencies, the amazing Matt Levine had a great column the other day about how absolutely bonkers the CFTA Whistleblower fund is, and how this guy who did a big whistleblowing is due to collect $100 million from the fund, except that’s the entire size of the fund, capped by law, and that includes the salaries for the actual regulators, so it is looking like that, barring an act of law (good luck with that) the whole thing might collapse. That is just fantastic.
Speaking of… eh, I can’t make that one work. I was on a roll there. Anyway, was watching Chris Hayes and Rachel last night after Great British Baking Show. I love their handoff. When it happens. Sometimes it does, sometimes they chat a bit as Chris’ show finishes and Rachel’s starts. Sometimes Rachel just says “thank you Chris,” and gets right into it. I wonder about this. Does Rachel just get to decide if she has follow-up questions? Does Chris have to just sit there, still being on it at the end of a long show, just in case Rachel feels like being chatty? Or do they agree beforehand somehow? Is it like Tinder? Is there a secret button and light on both of their desks, and if they both press the button, and the light lights up, they know they’re both up for some witty repartée today? How does it work?
Okay, well, even though my alarm was set for the same time it always is, I am somehow behind today. Gotta get Jane in a few minutes. So I will leave you for now. Let’s do a mix. Shit. Do I even have one ready today? Let’s see. Ok. Well, we whipped one up. Here you go. A moody and quiet one for today:
A Dream of Love by Ultra Vivid Scene. Shit, man. That is a beautiful song. I might go on an UVS binge today. That guy’s on Twitter but he’s a college prof now and does not like it when you tweet to him about UVS. Very odd. Maybe he’s in recovery. I leave him alone. Huh this is mostly oldies, I guess, though now Danielle Durack, not the new First Aid Kit… Oh and the new Miranda Lambert. God, what a beautiful song. She did the “back to basics” thing right. That album is gorgeous. Hard to believe she’s the same woman I saw strutting on an arena stage with Taylor Swift a bajillion screaming girls.
Talk to you guys soon!
wowowowow—i just read those excerpts in the verge. putting aside all the brazen sexism, this techbro writing about his sexual conquests and boardroom successes as if he were a direct descendant to the beats? GTFOH, dockers. there's no outsider cred in being in it for the money.
sorry about the squirrel. i apologize to bugs as i kill them, so i totally get it.
Your talk of the difficulty of the IRS and technology reminded me of this great piece an ex-coworker at the MBTA just published.
https://ryan-mahoney.net/sustaining-digital-transformation.html
There are so many people who would love to work on digital tech for public organizations but it's usually so frustrating. The MBTA turned that all around a few years ago by building a small focused tech group that used modern tech and project planning techniques. It was a super fun place to work.I know it's a lot harder to apply these lessons to something as huge as the IRS but we can dream.
Also, I love Ultra Vivid Scene. Joy 1967-1990 is an absolute masterpiece.My friends in Monsterland got to work with Kurt Ralske and loved the experience. Sadly that SpinArt EP seems to not on Spotify any more but he did some intersting stuff to their sound.