Good morning. Hello. How are you? #440
Daddy tried. Spending a whole day with Jane. Japanese Kit Kats and Translations. What's up with China?
“Daddy this egg corner is sad.”
“Oh. Yeah. I am sorry about that. I didn’t cut the eggs right.”
“The egg corner is too small.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Daddy tried.”
“Daddy didn’t try.”
<Pause.>
“You’re right. You’re right." Daddy didn’t try.”
<Pause.>
“Daddy didn’t try.”
Good morning! Hello. How are you? What the hell is it? Tuesday? July 13? I labeled yesterday’s mix July 13. Sorry about that. It was only the 12th. Apologies to Cassel who got confused and thought it was his birthday. And Happy birthday, Cassel. I don’t usually mention birthdays in here because once you do that you have to do it all the stinkin’ time and my birthday calendar is insane because at some point, like, ten years ago I linked it to Facebook, or apple address book which was linked to Facebook, or something, I can’t figure out what, but I have a “birthdays” calendar in my Apple iCal that has thousands of birthdays in it and they’re not always right because, however they got there, originally they came from some social network (I really think Facebook, years and years ago, when they let data leak more readily, or at least profitlessly) and back then some wise people were putting face birthdays in. Some sometimes I say “Happy birthday” to someone and they’re completely confused because it’s not their birthday and they certainly don’t remember what random they date they put into Facebook in, like, 2009 or something. Anyway, every day in my iCal (and yes, I still use iCal, screw you Google calendar) there are, like, seven birthays, several of them from people I don’t really know that well anymore, and there’s no real fixing it without diligently looking at it every day for a year and deleting those who aren’t right and… actually, that seems sort of fun and up my alley maybe I’ll do that next year.
Good news I wrote to that Discogs seller and he seems cool, offered me a refund on the 7” and a partial on the 12” and I only took him up on the partial on the 12” because it is def. warped, but he says he definitely sent the 7” and I totally believe I just didn’t see it in the packaging, even though I double-checked, but now Emma took all the packaging to the recycling center so I can’t triple check so that’s on me, so I think we have reached an amicable solution to the terrifying interaction that could leave one of us scarred with a negative rating on Discogs which is just a giant hassle. Just the other day I was trying to buy a stellar copy of Lou Reed’s New York, 80’s pressing, unopened, for a very reasonable price and Discogs was like “You do not meet this seller’s buyer rating requirements” because my rating is only, like, 99.6% because five years ago I spaced it and forgot to pay a guy and even though I worked really hard to resolve it with him, he left me a negative rating and it’s like a permanent mark on my record like the Violent Femmes mocked but it’s real maaaan.
I did get a new sweet 180 gram blue swirl vinyl copy of the Dune soundtrack by Toto and gave that a listen yesterday. When archiving it I learned I already owned a copy, a beat-up early 90’s copy and I had no recollection of it, went and looked and sure enough, there it was, one of those old radio station copies with sharpie and masking tape. I guess I’m still happy with my pretty new one, though.
Also why didn’t anyone tell me about Minnie Riperton she is amazing.
Yesterday I watched Jane the whole day. Emma and Janet had to leave the house on some medical procedure (don’t worry, everyone’s fine) and no one knew how long it was going to take. I had calls at 2 and 2:30 so I was like “yeah whatever I’ll watch her,” because how long can a doctor’s visit really take? Turns out all day. So I had Jane for my calls. Which was hilarious because for the first call she was supremely well behaved, just sat on the couch in my office doing her Kahn Academy and no one even noticed she was there, even though her little leg was in the picture. And that was good because the first call was external. Then the second call was internal, some AWS pricing stuff (my god we spend so much money on AWS) and Jane just starts yodelling or something. Makes the call completely impossible. But we had gotten through the general gist and next steps before the yodeling so it wasn’t too bad. And at least she was good through the external call with strangers.
Anway, she wanted something different and she got it. A whole day with daddy. She mostly enjoyed it. She kept making up times in her head that mama would be home, like lunch, and I’d just say “hopefully,” but she is too young to realize yet that “hopefully” means “no.” But after the initial disappointment each time, she would adjust and we’d have quite a pleasant time.
Also one good thing about the day Emma spent out of the house is she stopped by the Asian Market for me and got me more Shaoxing Wine and a ton of new Japanese Kit Kat flavors: whole wheat biscuit, orange chocolate, some sort of mysterious round chocolate ball flavor, and one I’ve already had that I really like, Raspberry Hazelnut. The whole wheat biscuit one sounds real weird but is shockingly good.
Speaking of the Japanese, the Japanese translator of my book has politely informed me I am useless with Japanese fonts and has offered to take the whole project off my hands and I am so excited. Also I love working with that guy. We’re in different time zones. Basically I do, like, fifteen minutes of work on that project and send it off, then I don’t hear from him till the next morning. It is a lovely way to work on projects and I recommend it heartily. Total stab in the dark. Wait a day. “Did that work?” “No.” Do it all over again. Can’t imagine why he’s getting frustrated with me.
This China stuff is getting weird and confusing and I’m not especially sure what to make of it. Here’s a Wall Street Journal article summarizing the current situation (I’m sorry if you don’t have a journal subscription who can blame you and don’t worry you’ll get the gist). Apparently TikTok’s parent company (which is huge and owns a bunch more huge Chinese internet properties besides TikTok) also got the warnings about delaying their IPO that Didi did. Unlike Didi, ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) decided to listen to the advice and delay their IPO. Not unwise. But! Okay, so. First. Apparently China has privacy laws. News to me, but seems reasonable enough. The government doesn’t want private companies collecting stuff about its citizens that it already knows, like birthdays and “ID numbers.” This does seem to be a slightly more complex/weird dance than in the US, because there’s a lot of things the government doesn’t know about its citizens that it would want to know, and his historically leaned on internet companies in order to learn these things. I’ve never really thought about the interplay between these two before because I’ve just assumed that the government was totally cool with internet companies collecting everything, because the government would get it, but apparently the situation is more nuanced. So, that is interesting. OR, is it all a front, just a convenient, sounds-good tack to take to put the hammer down on these companies, to keep them, or delay them, from listing on foreign exchanges? And, like, if this is a good faith effort to improve cybersecurity, what’s that got to do with where you list, and wouldn’t a bunch more money from an IPO help the situation?
It seems reasonable that the Chinese government, like the American government (maybe, hopefully) would want to keep their internet companies from becoming giant monopolies. But they have already started tackling that, drafting new anti-monopoly rules last November. So why do it through the guise of cybersecurity laws? There seems to be some talk about how they’re worried about the increased eyes and regulation from the Feds if they list on an American exchange, which, yes, definitely true. But also not a thing cybersecurity reviews will help? Chinese companies aren’t particularly insecure about their cybersecurity practices. These are top-notch companies, not exactly data amateurs. Sure, they try and hoover up every bit of user data they can, like Facebook does, but that’s not a cyber-security issue, it’s a privacy issue, and in any case, if you’re trying to make national heroes to combat Facebook, wouldn’t you want this, within legal bounds? And in any any case, none of this protects these companies from the long arm of the Feds. If the Feds want your data, they will subpoena you in FISA court and get it, doesn’t matter what your cybersecurity chops are. And they will do this whether you’re listed on an American exchange or not. If you have American users you’ll be subject. So what is being protected here? Are they trying to implement some hard-core set of data protection standards that will extend to, like, protecting yourself from the NSA’s black ops? Because good luck? And, again, irrelevant if you’re listed or not. But this doesn’t feel like a network-level/day-one exploit NSA kind of thing.
The interplay between trying to stop IPOs and the privacy explanation and the cybersecurity explanation doesn’t make sense. The latter two would apply to the other giant Chinese public companies — notably Tencent and Alibaba — and it does seem like they’re chipping away at them a bit, too, but, it is super confusing and scattershot. Tencent has to give up its exclusive music rights. Okay, why? Then there’s this whole weird thing where Tencent tried to buy two Twitch-type sites, Huya and DouYu, and the government said no. Because I guess they don’t want a Twitch monopoly in their country? Even though Tencent already owns 40% of one and 70% of the other.
Then, my god, what are the ramifications here? Every Chinese publicly traded stock is at risk? Capital collapse? Is that the end game? Why?
But then, just now, they were like “yeah, it’s cool Tencent, go ahead and buy another search engine,” so, like, it’s not just a blanket “Tencent is too big” thing. Maybe.
It’s just so confusing because I thought China wanted Tencent to be big! I thought they wanted an EA/Zynga national champion! I think most people did?
It just feels like there’s something I’m not getting. Is it basic trade war stuff? They don’t want to be helping our exchanges? Then, fine? They’ve basically taken over Hong Kong (god, remember how, like, four years ago that seemed unthinkable then they just did it and the entire world let them?), why not let them list there? All very mysterious.
Anyway.
Finished Kari Byron from Mythbuster’s book last night. It was a pleasant read. Decent self-help book. Decent manual on how to be a girl and a woman and how to live a life of sanity and adventure. I would encourage my daughter to read it. Had some more details on the general salacious gossipy questions I had about the production of the show and I think I have a pretty good picture now. I can move my roving obsession on to something else. Also she is an Anaïs Nin fan, and not one of those surface level ones that have just read Little Birds, good for her.
Oh and we got a brand new June oven. Props to them. Solid customer service. Apparently it’s really rare these things just die completely and their engineers are chompin’ at the bit to get our oven back so they can do an analysis on it, so I gotta lug it to the PakMail today and send it back. Thing is heavy. I know they’re expensive, but I really can’t recommend June ovens enough. They’re not toaster ovens. They’re better versions of your giant, slow, dumb main oven. They heat up to 425 so fast. Like our big oven takes over a half an hour to do this. The June does it in, like, five minutes. We almost never use our regular oven, just for big meals like thanksgiving. Also every kid that has ever seen it loves it. Jane is so happy its back.
That was just an excuse to throw a Jane picture in here.
Okay let’s do a mix! A covers mix! That has that “Smells like Teen Spirit” cover from Black Widow because you gotta. Which reminded me, of course, of the godfather of the “moody cover in a movie of an alternative hit,” Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World” from Donnie Darko, so you gotta include that. And I found this really good Talk Talk tribute album that is immense and awesome and broody and moody. And Annie just did a fantastic cover of Just Like Honey god I love Annie and Angel Olsen has a whole EP of new wave covers coming out which is just gonna be so great and the first single is out from it. And Garbage have two great covers on the bonus disc of their new album. And Debbie Gibson isn’t really a cover but it’s a cover of herself so I am rolling with it. And our old friend Catherine’s band Chop Chop they were so great I miss Catherine I hope she is doing swimmingly these days I should drop her a line.
Oh wow only three minutes till getting Jane out of bed I will wrap this up. Have a lovely Tuesday, in as much as a Tuesday can ever be lovely.
Oh crap. Forgot the Spotify link. I was rushing: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1gaQuSLZjkUzm63SIApjej?si=3b4f36cc33484893