Good morning. Hello. How are you? #399
F-150 lightning, Bitcoin, Biden, Bake-Off, Republican antics at the state level, Cindytalk
Good morning! Hey there what’s shakin? How’s tricks? What’s today? Thursday? Oh okay, I rather like Thursdays, this shouldn’t be so bad then. I can deal with this. How do I feel? Um, well, my stomach is a bit upset, actually. And my ring middle fingers are both feeling arthritic and trigger-fingery-y. Well, that’s not good. No, and you hav a pretty bad headache too. Why do I have a pretty bad headache? Well, you had a tiny wine last night. A single tiny wine? That’s it? Yep. Well that is not very hard core. No, no it is not.
I took a bunch of cute photos of Jane at dinner. I put one on instagram, but here’s another one. Prepare yourself.
We had such a lovely bedtime last night. Jane is conversational. Jane is getting her tantrums under control. I texted mommy at one point, and Jane looked over and read the text back to me. It read:
Mommmmmyyyyyy. A light burned out in the bathroom and Jane reeeallly wants mommy to come change it.
And she read every word back to me. I mean, now, she knew the topic already, but that’s like… what? First? Second grade reading level? Spooky.
Still doesn’t want to use the potty very much, though.
Watched the release of the Ford F-150 Lightning last night. It was kinda cool. I am kinda excited about it. I mean, yes, you might be sitting there thinking “F-150’s are so macho and they’re just awful why would you be excited about that,?” And that’s cool, but it is worth noting that the F-150 is the single best-selling automobile in the United States, and having an electric version — and an electric version that seems substantially more capable than the gas version — is a potentially giant step on the US’s journey toward reducing carbon emissions. It’s quite possible that the Tesla Cybertruck will be a hit, and the specs will be so good that all the macho men of America will get really excited about it. Or that the specs, at least, offset it’s silly looking appearance. It was an interesting gamble to make it so.. Cyber. Sure it might be construed as tough and macho and the macho men might flock to it, but macho men are a notoriously timid bunch when it comes to stylings, and there’s a long line of cars that, when they came out, seemed like macho men might be into them, only to eventually have them realize nah, that’s too girly girl. The PT Cruiser. The New Beetle. The Mini. The Integra. There’s a real chance the Cybertruck never takes off, and/or is a one-, two-year fad and is done. But the F-150 Lightning? Looks like something they own, that they want to own. There’s a non-zero chance you could buy one, bring it to the worksite, and no one would make fun of you. Of course there’s a good chance someone will, because macho men are insecure and aggro, but… it just might work. We should all be rooting for it if we care about the environment. And yes, there are a bunch of mach men hobbyists who don’t really need a truck (like me!) but there are also a shit-ton of people who use them for actual work and that is a giant segment of the auto industry that will never, ever go away even if the entire country moves out of the suburbs and back into the cities. You don’t move a table saw, plywood and generator on a bus.
Yeah, I am not loving this stomach ache today.
We also watched some more Great British Baking Show last night. Doing about a season a week right now, I think we have two more seasons? They are all sort of starting to blend together. There’s a lot more rhubarb in the earlier seasons. Paul’s hair is worse. Mel and Sue are growing on me. They’re really the kings of knowing, cringey bad puns. But they touch the baking too much and have ruined at least two bakes with their meddling. A funny thing happened this season — they were asked to make “soda bread,” which, you know, is bread where you use baking powder/soda instead of yeast. It was hilarious, though, because it seems that the English do not make bread without yeast. But to every yahoo America baker who’s ever half-assed banana bread or something, “soda bread” is our — Mel and Sue pun here — bread and butter. And Paul kept going on about how tricky soda bread was to make, how the things were so finicky and unpredictable and… just no, Paul. Literally the point of baking soda is to remove the finicky yeast from the whole equation. All Americans know this, because we are lazy. It reminded me of the time they had the bakers bake a batch of basic American chocolate brownies and every single one of them whiffed it. It really is amazing how different basic American and English baking are.
Bitcoin took a nice tumble yesterday. Let’s see where it’s at now. Eh, surprise surprise. Hovering around $40k, down only 17%. This always happens with a bitcoin rout — people get so excited that the price is “low” that they start buying and the rout isn’t that bad. Of course, a 17% drop in a single day would put it as the #2 worst drop ever if Bitcoin was the stock market, but it’s just par for the course for BTC. Not enough, in the end, for my shadenfreude to kick in. I would like to see — and assume there will be eventually — a drop of over 50%. I mean, it’s dropped over 80% multiple times, so why not.
It’s also worth pointing out, of course, that bitcoin’s energy consumption doesn’t care whether a coin is worth $1 or $100,000. It’s still massive, it’s still cranking along, it is always going to keep cranking along. It is insane.
Man. Biden must be pissed about the economy. Bitcoin falling, stock market falling, buncha assholes ranting on and on about inflation — you can just taste the BBB and Republican’s salivating desire for inflation. They want it so bad. Biden knows all of it is bullshit but yet here we are. Things will probably pop before too long, but he took a holistic approach to solving these problems, rather than Trump’s myopic obsession with the actual stock market number. The approach with more wisdom, but also with more short-term political risks. I feel bad for the guy. I mean, I still don’t really like Biden, but I can’t help but feel bad for him.
God, I am already stressing about the mid-terms.
Here in the Triangle, the Republican assholes who are the trustees of the UNC system overrode the recommendations of faculty — an unheard of act — in confirming the tenure status of Nikole Hannah-Jones, which is complete bullshit. Jones is what is known as a Knight Chair - which means it’s a tenured UNC position funded by the Knight Foundation. They, like, literally pay the bills. There are a lot of these Knight Chairs around the country. The positions are tenured. (I know a lot about these Knight Chairs for reasons we’ll not go into today but suffice it to say I have some firsthand knowledge). So far, the Knight Foundation has sort of tried to split the baby on this scandal: telling the Times that they wouldn’t seek to dictate tenure terms, but urge UNC to reconsider. Pretty tepid. Though I suppose with these asshole Republican trustees, god knows what they’d do to the entire system — this is not the only Knight chair at UNC. Might just say “buh buh, Knight foundation.” Cut off your nose to spite your face, etc. etc.
These are the sort of lower-level results of these split state governments, Republican control of our legislature.
To say nothing of what’s going on in Texas, where they just signed a near-complete abortion law, because republicans are 100% confident Amy Covid Bash and Brett fucking Kavanaugh will uphold their bans. And they will. Seems pretty safe bet that Roe will be overturned before the end of the year. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes. I mean, it’ll be horrible, absolutely, but it’ll also be super interesting to see what happens to satanic marriage of evangelicals and republicans when the evangelicals have gotten what they want. Maybe they’ll — gasp — start caring about all life and work to ban the death penalty and, you know, feed people. I do not say this to diminish the severity of the crisis in abortion rights we are in right now. But at this point I see it as pretty much a done deal, and am trying to find a silver lining?
My old friend Gibby and his record label (with a friend) Dais records is re-releasing two Cindytalk albums: Wappinchaw and The Wind is Strong. This is very exciting to me. Not only have I been a giant fan of Cinder’s voice since I first heard it on Kangaroo by This Mortal Coil when I was in high school, but in the mid 1990’s my friend Annie and I (aided by the help of many others) brought Cindytalk over to America for their first full-scale American tour, and we hit the road with them, playing something like 20 dates, including some great venues like Speak in Tongues (RIP) in Cincinnati, Prince’s club in Minneapolis, the Black Cat in DC, The Off Ramp in Seattle (where I met Layne Staley backstage). It was an overwhelming, intense, insane time. Recently Annie ripped a few of the videos of it and I watched a few whole sets from the tour again and… my god. Cinder’s voice. The band. Just stunning. Paul Middleton, the drummer, has sadly passed on and is dearly missed. But the music lives. And it is super exciting and amazing Gibby is getting these records re-released.
The album’s not on Spotify (yet!) but a single song is:
Okay time for a mix today. God, do I even have any ready? I don’t know let’s see. Yes we do. A Ladies mix. Excellent. This is a good one. Has that Loamlands I’ve been going on and on about. Local act. She owns the Pinhook in Durham, they are awesome. And this new girl in red act that is catching my ear this morning. And Edith Frost, because I enjoy her Twitter. A few other new things as well, well newISH — Sarah Mary chadwick, Danielle Durack — and some classics. Enjoy!
Man. My stomach is not getting any better. This was a hard one to get through. Thank you for your patience. Hope all’s well, or at least endurable, for you out there.
OH, i forgot to compliment your adorable child—i mean, just look at her!
CYBERTRUCK?! this is the first i hear about it. first of all: dumb name—AND it looks like a middle schooler drew it on lined notebook paper after watching tron.
love that explanation of bitcoin—now it makes sense to me. just kidding: now it seems more pointless than ever.
the NHJ thing was THE talk of academic twitter yesterday. people are steamed! for all their cancel culture complaints, right-wing assholes sure like to elbow their way to the front of the line to participate.
i hope your tummy gets better soon! i used to get terrible stomachaches (not bellyaches, which in my mind are lower) that turned out to be *gasp* gas. phazyme was the best to take care of them.