Good morning. Hello. How are you? #403
Republican cultists, George Floyd and what's been accomplished, world population shrinkage, Apple's dominance, and a really long, self-indulgent part about dreams
Good morning! Hello! How are you? What. Is. Up. I survived Monday. Absolutely nothing bad happened but it was still kind of horrible and I spent the day in a low-level anxiety about the state of the world. Democracy under assault everywhere but especially in America is really is bonkers it’s just not a thing I ever really though I would live to see. The complete lack of shame while they destroy what they claim to love. I mean, it would almost make some lunatic sense of the socialists and liberals were trying to destroy American democracy since, like, they’re not super psyched about its unrelenting history of evil. But nope. The people who claim to love it are the ones working non-stop to destroy it.
One thing I am sick of are polls that say things like “51% of Republicans believe that Trump won the election.” I mean, I am obviously sick of Republicans and their shit — and at this point, with 51% of them believing that, if you’re still a Republican you need to do some serious soul searching. But it bugs me, the implication that if a majority of Republicans believe something, it’s a mainstream belief. It bugs me we keep pretending they’re anything like a major political party at this point. The last Gallup poll had just 25% of Americans claiming to be republicans. That means if half of the Republicans believe some stupid-ass thing, that just 12.5% of Americans believe it. They are a cult. An insanely powerful, malevolent cult, but a cult nonetheless.
I also think it’s just so so sad and funny how much they’re getting their pants in a bunch about “critical race theory,” the 1619 Project and, like, schooling. They’re just so butt-hurt about the left finally getting its act together on the education front after, oh, I don’t know a hundred years of the right getting uncontested domination of our public education system and indoctrinating us all, forcing every progressive American to, like, slowly figure things out on their own and realize that oh hey maybe the founding fathers weren’t godlike geniuses and maybe also they didn’t care about making sure we all kept rifles in our house
Ha wow I didn’t really mean to start this this way, but oh well. What are you going to do.
It is the anniversary of the George Floyd murder today. Biden was hoping to have his policing reform bill done by today, but that didn’t happen. It’s stuck in congress, languishing as a cadre of progressive democrats make sure they are just done, and insisting that the bill removes qualified immunity. Good for them. But stepping back, today is a day that I think I need to read this Wikipedia article on the list of changes and accomplishments made since the George Floyd murder. It is not enough, but it is probably a good idea to take a moment and acknowledge that some things are, slowly, improving. It is very flag centric, but it’s a start. It’s a start.
I read this article yesterday about how the population of the world is going to start shrinking soon. For example, China’s population is expected to fall from 1.4 billion to 700 million in 2100. That is insane. I’ve been kind of keeping an eye on this topic for a while, and it is amazing me how many people are really upset about it. I mean, I certainly understand the challenges that are going to come with it, but I cannot work up any real alarm at a shrinking population. It just seems like an unmitigated good to me. Like, when I try and be an optimist, it is good: we have solved a major problem this planet was facing, and solving that problem will, hopefully majorly contribute to solving two other major problems facing the planet - starvation and climate change. When I am in my most pessimistic mood, I still think it’s good: the plutocrats are going to lose the source of their power. The masses are calling bullshit on humanity’s way of life and are using one source of power that they still have. There is the makings of some seriously dystopian sci fi in there: the powerful forcing the powerless to have kids so that they have someone to dominate.
Also Apple is totally going to win this lawsuit by Epic and it is going to totally bum me out because they will have no incentive to change and it is so obviously 100% a monopoly and none of us will have any recourse, or leeway, or possibility of redress, we’ll just have to keep sucking up Apple’s unilateral whimsy and pretend that the web is a totally viable alternative to the app store, except there can’t be a totally viable alternative to the app store because that would be dangerous. And that it would be just horrible if Amazon was allowed to explain to users why you can’t buy a Kindle book in the Kindle App. There’s nothing. There is zero competition and there never will be. Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the government of China could all get together and agree to make a viable competitor to the iOS app store and they’d fail. But I strongly suspect they’re going to win this lawsuit anyway. Please welcome your benevolent overlords.
Here are my new tomatoes in our actual ground. Look. They have not died yet:
Anyway. Yeah. Monday. Got through it without freaking out, even with gloomy thoughts such as those running through my head all day. I’ll try and pull it back a bit today. It’s cloudy, but I can handle it. I’m listening to the new Olivia Rodrigo album and it is very good but I wish she would capitalize her words. All lower case isn’t cool or clever it is boring. If you’re gonna be cliche’d at least start using metal umlauts again, that’s not overused anymore. But the album is very good. Imagine feeling that much. God. Imagine feeling that much.
I had a dream last night that I was some sort of medicaid inspector slash investigator. But more like a cleaner. Sorta like Victor the Cleaner. Like a problem solver slash investigator. But not, like, against fraud? More like…. seeking answers. It felt like it had a bit of an X-Files tinge to it, which make sense because right before bed Emma told me about the hot new X-Files gossip.
But anyway, I would, like, go to the homes of recently deceased Medicaid recipients who we had a hospital record of them being dead but we couldn’t actually prove it. Like the hospital computers were going rogue and declaring people dead even when they weren’t. Sometimes I would find them alive and well. But one time I went to this house, it was a basement apartment with a street-level entrance right on West Burnside in Portland, Or. And it turned out that the old lady’s son was pulling some sort of Medicare scam. Like she had died but he was still collecting the checks. Except he wasn’t, like, pulling a scam, really, he was just still living off of money that was being put into their joint bank account every day. But he was doing it because he was mentally ill and couldn’t really work and had nowhere to go and I felt so bad. I told him I could stall the truth for a year, but he was going to have to figure something out. And I knew that in telling him this, it was going to eventually catch up to me with my surpriors and I would get in trouble or maybe even lose my job.
So I got depressed and walked down the street a bit to where that nightclub used to be where I saw Motörhead in 2002 or so (oh hello metal umlaut didn’t expect to see you today) and Ladytron in, like, 2007 or so, and went in, middle of the day, because I was depressed. Only it turned out the interior almost exactly matched Brooklyn Steel, and there was a giant goth festival going on. Sorta like a mix between the gothy bands that play at DragonCon and the old Convergence festivals, remember those wow those were fun. But working the door was Xtine from Xmortis, and on the stage was YouShriek, and they were fuckin awesome. Like Mark and Skot and John were in the band, yes, but the band was, like, a fourteen piece or so? It was like a sort of goth version of early Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree or something. It had a formation. At the core were these four Japanese guitar players in long, flowing black robes, who kept their head down and sort of made sound like Godspeed. The next layer in the formation were four women who had the standard Man Ray circa 2000 platform boots and blue and black long braid extensions things. They were mostly playing percussive instruments, though I was standing side stage (like you do at Brooklyn Steel) so I couldn’t see the far side, but one woman over there seemed to have a goth trombone. Don’t ask me what that looks like, but I knew it was a goth trombone. And the drummer was one of those no shirt muscular type Man Ray guys. And it’s all very odd because these Man Ray House Style Central Casting characters are from the wrong era of Man Ray, YouShriek was mostly from the early era of Man Ray. John was in a sweet black suit ensemble sorta like John Wick. Mark was in a black leather jacket. Skot hadn’t aged a day and was in a black t-shirt and jeans and had really good hair. They sounded great. I think it’d be quite nice to see YouShriek again.
Hrm well okay that was a little long. I know no one likes hearing about dreams, but in case YouShriek was thinking about getting back together, I recommend going the 14-piece route. Listen to that drone in the intro of Grim and tell me it wouldn’t sound awesome played by four guitarists at once.
Okay that’s all I have for you today. I have a board meeting today. I think I’m prepped, but it would be good to go through the deck one more time. But the big excitement is that today is the day where I put the laundry away. I get to have a tiny wine while putting the laundry away. It is gonna RULE. Big news, exciting times.
Mix time. Just a mix. I swear I’m working on other mixes. Many of them are almost done. I’ll have a little time later this week to flesh a bunch of them out. I don’t actually have a mix done for tomorrow, though, so we’re gonna have to figure something out before then. Hrm. But not today. Today we get this mix, which I rather like. Mostly older… um… okay all older. yeah, not one new song on it. Oh well. I hadn’t herd Black Magic in ages. Really is the best post-Pulp Jarvis song isn’t it? And I’ve been on a Loney, Dear kick again lately. I need to check in with that guy, see if he’s got anything new. What a huge talent that guy is. And Jake! Cyanide Valentine. As the years go by I become convinced that Jake was the best songwriter the Boston music scene ever produced. Every band he had – that he has now – is just awesome.
Okay have a good Tuesday. Hang in there. Like that cat.
like you, i have a hard time seeing how a dropping worldwide population is anything but good. in fact, it's always amazing to me that people think things can grow indefinitely. (like: you think the stock market will just eep going up and up and up FOREVER with just occasional drops? i'm clearly nowhere near an expert, but that seems... shortsighted and unrealistic.)
unrelated but also sort of related to the beginning of today's installment: yesterday, i finished a novel (leave the world behind) that was a real page-turner but also amazingly anxiety inducing, and now i feel like we are on an inevitable road to ruin.
also i'm going to defend my noncapitalization of words, which i've been doing for eons. it's how i cut loose from my day job. yes, i've considered changing it, but the time isn't right just yet. this does not mean that i am defending olivia rodrigo, whom i find underwhelming so far.
i am absolutely gonna plug jake's current bad the dream eaters—and the weird little video project they've got going on youtube, the dream eating freak show. it's silly and short and fun, and i hope they make it big. a lot of talent there, jake and elizabeth. and great hair.
Now I want to name something “unilateral whimsy”. Probably best used by one of those earnest yet sardonic aging women indie rockers though. Oh wait. Sh*t.