Good morning. Hello. How are you? #420
Kitty invasion, colored vinyl overload, Apple Health oh god, Ocean-bound plastics, general litany of political nightmares.
Good morning, duuuuude. 420 joke, hahaha yeah. Etc. etc. god I love 420 jokes they are just so great. It’s my last day working in, like, 10 days? Yes. I go back to work on the 27th. No! The 29th! Twelve days! Well, that is a lot of bang for the buck for taking six days off. Woo hoo. I suppose I should probably let my coworkers know this, make sure they don’t need anything. There. Done.
I forgot Andy Shea’s birthday yesterday. I have a birthday calendar, but I gave up on it years ago. I don’t really know most people’s birthdays, and don’t check Facebook before I write this, so it couldn’t tell me. But in truth I have always been terrible about birthdays, and I’m pretty terrible about “one year ago” days, especially in death, which is, of course, absurdly ironic since I work at a — nay, the — “one year ago” company. I feel bad, but I know Andy wouldn’t care. Still think of him all the time, and that is what matters. But I still feel bad. Happy belated, Andy. Hopefully this fall I will get my rock to you.
My cats have invaded my office. They are everywhere. Keely was sitting on my office chair when I came in. I think they wake up before everyone else in the house, and they know our routine, and that my office is where the action is, where the day starts, since they can’t get into the bedroom, they just come down here and wait. Roy was just sitting on top of my records, trying to chew on a vinyl slipcase. I’ma gonna need one of those kitty spray bottles down here.
Oh my god he just went back up there. Ugh they didn’t care about my office for months and now they’re obsessed. I’m going to have to keep my door shut, which is a whole thing because of AC zones. Crap.
I should have taken a picture for you. I forgot I am sorry.
Speaking of vinyl it’s getting absurd when you purchase a record trying to find the correct version on Discogs because a new record can have, like, ten different colored vinyl editions. Here is the Discogs page for the new Japanese Breakfast album. It has nine different colored vinyl versions. Most of them are special releases for this record store or this chain or for the online store or whatever. Most of the time, before the record’s out, you’re not even aware of all of them, or that they’re different, so it’s not like you can pick and choose. Sometimes you luck out and get a cool color. Sometimes, you go to Discogs to catalog your recent purchase and discover there is a much cooler color that was, like, a Rough Trade special. Jubilee had a VinylMePlease special edition, and special editions for UK/EU indies, Turntable Lab, Secretly Society, “Indie” exclusive, EU exclusive, Spotify Fan First exclusive, End of an Ear exclusive, and Japanese Breakfast Web Store exclusive. Confusingly, even though I ordered mine from VinylMePlease, I got the “Indie” exclusive. You can’t win.
Good news, everyone, Apple wants to not only build your computer and your phone and your car, Apple are also trying to become your doctor. They fired the startup that ran their employee health care clinics (Apple just loves startups. Until they put them out of business) and took them over and ran them themselves under the name AC Care.
(Actually small aside here, when watching WWDC there was an odd moment when Apple turned the floor over to a startup, a startup in the health space. Apple used to do this a lot — actually highlight developers at their developer’s conference. But it seemed odd doing it right in the middle of a section about Apple’s new health initiatives, and I cynically thought “yeah, you just love Apple until they put you out of business.” And I didn’t realize how right that was. At this point I wouldn’t be shocked to learn Apple secretly already owned them.)
Because what we all want in life is our employer to have our healthcare data. And then when an employee said “hey maybe we should be more careful with employee health data” they got yelled at and left the company under mysterious circumstances. And of course we don’t know exactly what happened because Apple, who famously “never talks to the press” talked to the press and said “that’s not what happened but we don’t talk to the press so we won’t tell you what actually happened but it wasn’t that.” And what I really want in my life is the world’s largest company to take over my health care that seems like a real sweet idea.
I mean, I get it, it must suck to have a two point one seven trillion dollar market cap and still have to please shareholders and grow and what industries are even out there that are big? Why, cars and healthcare, of course. And a public company CEO’s job is to make the stock go up. I mean, never mind the fact that Apple became the world’s most valuable company not by chasing the absolute largest markets out there. Also why not energy? Why not something that sort of plays to your strengths in technology and retail and doesn’t conveniently involve personal data. Oh right. Because they’ve just done a great propaganda campaign to convince everyone that they’re the trustworthy ones with your personal data, also exempting first-party data from the rules (that is, data all held by a single company), and, conveniently, dealing them a better hand than everyone else. Total coincidence, I’m sure.
In any case, the real “data” problem in health care is that no one has resolved the dichotomy of better data analysis in the face of the sure-fire fact that every insurance company in America is going to use “better data” to deny healthcare coverage and/or make it more expensive. And sure, maybe there’s something in there, a heady mix of Apple’s close relationship with Berkshire Hathaway and their past experience using the carrot and stick to nudge the cell carriers along to providing unlimited service to iPhone users. They theoretically have the experience to maybe solve this problem, like they did with unlimited cell service that we all enjoy — oh wait. That didn’t work. And I’m sorry, but for every person who gets a cheaper health insurance rate because they wear an Apple watch, there is someone who will get a more expensive rate.
Next rant: WTF is up with these new “ocean-bound plastic” recycled plastic products I’m seeing. First it was some dog toys made with “ocean-bound plastic” and now Barbie? Says the press release: “Mattel Inc., a toy manufacturer based in El Segundo, California, recently launched Barbie Loves the Ocean, the company’s first fashion doll line made from recycled ocean-bound plastics. The launch is part of the company’s sustainability goal to achieve 100 percent recycled, recyclable or bio-based plastic materials across all its products and packaging by 2030.” (which, LOL, we all no isn’t going to happen).
I mean, that banner’s a lot better. Barbie from 90% recycled plastic, great, yes, perfect, thanks. But this ocean-bound thing is a chin-rubber. They seem to be defining ocean-bound plastic as plastic that is recovered from an area within 50 kilometers of the ocean in regions that have no formal plastic collection system. This is a thing now! I guess that’s pretty cool? But is it really ocean-bound? If it was ocean-bound, arrest someone! Putting plastic in the ocean is illegal! God, actually, I have no idea if its illegal or not. Gulp. But, like, this feels to me like saying “our fur coats only come from furs that had been stolen by the mob.” Maybe arrest the mob?
I dunno. I am talking myself out of this rant as I write it. Intervening and using plastic that isn’t already going to go into the recycling system is pretty cool. Though I guess the devil’s in the details, because unless Mattel is, like, going out there and making a new capture system, isn’t there already one? Mysterious.
So I saw a headline this morning that said something along the lines of “Republicans are an inch away from embracing January 6,” (sorry I can’t find it now) and I thought that was a very good headline because it so succinctly summarizes what’s happening. It’s so crazy this shit is still going on. Trump becomes more and more patently mentally ill, shouting about the steal, and the entire party is just running with it, right over the “Hitler had some good points” cliff.
Another thing that irks me is we’re still finding out all this crazy shit that happened in the Trump administration and there seems like there’s zero sense of urgency in getting to the bottom of it, or prosecuting it. I mean, they subpoena’d the data of their own legal counsel! That is some crazy shit. Okay, that one’s funny, but. I had some hope that Biden would do in this situation what he did with the stimulus package and learn from the lessons of the Obama administration. He learned that they were not going to negotiate in good faith on the stimulus and passed it anyway. But now he’s conveniently unlearned that. Part of this is Manchin’s fault, of course — he can hardly ditch the Republicans on infrastructure until abusive dad Joe tells him he can. But in terms of the Justice Department and prosecution? Remember when Obama didn’t prosecute all the torture criminals in some apparent effort at comity with Republicans and the bad precedent it would set, each administration prosecuting the actions of the previous one? Guess what? It’s happening anyway! Every Democratic administration from now until the end of time is going to be under criminal investigation from Republicans. It has already happened! Maybe we should think about, you know, actually prosecuting the actual criminals!
While I’m at it! Joe Manchin told a bunch of rich folks yesterday they should bribe a specific Republican senator to change his vote to support the Jan 6 commission so that it eases the pressure on him to keep opposing the filibuster. Because if the Jan 6 commission passes, it would mean bipartisanship is still alive. It did not seem to cross his mind that maybe it is not good if we could only claim that bipartisanship was still alive if a bunch of rich people made it so.
I should be fair and say he also told those rich people — who are generally pro-filibuster — that he would support some filibuster reform, like making it be a talking filibuster or lowering the threshold, which just makes me hate this guy more since he’s just toying around, fucking with everyone.
Ezra Klein wrote a half-hearted defense of Manchin and he’s not 100% wrong. We need him to approve justices. West Virginia is very red. But so what? An abusive father could be a good employee and a hard worker and pay the rent on time, but he is still an abusive father, and it is demeaning and humiliating to coddle him and tell him how great he is.
Manchin claims he loves bipartisanship, but sitting right in front of him is an issue that is hugely popular with members of both parties. Joe Manchin could become bipartisanship by supporting voting rights. His home constituency is telling him so. They are not going to punish him for it.
Okay, okay. Sorry. Been a while since I did a good politics rant. Really crazy how we’re still careening towards fascism and everyone’s like “this is fine.”
Let’s do a mix. Talked to my sister yesterday and the car I’m borrowing has a CD player that doesn’t work, alas, and a cassette deck! I’m gonna bring an adaptor to use my phone, but I kinda want to bring some cassettes. The thing is, though, I need a test cassette. Something I don’t care about, in case the hasn’t-been-used-in-years cassette deck eats it? I will have to think about that.
Shoegaze mix today. Mostly new and obscurities. Except for that Kitchens of Distinction song cuz it’s been in my head for months. Oh man, Undo the Taboo. The perfect Spectrum song. I like his even more droney new stuff, but I love this song so much. That tour ruled. Bowery Electric opened. Wait I talked about this like seven months ago in one of these posts can’t do that again. Also I am super into Deafhaven’s progression from a full-on black metal band to basically a shoegaze band it is just great. I am totally going to see them again next time they come round.
i like when you rant (but mostly because i agree with you—i can't even keep up with the news because it's so upsetting what people are getting away with)