Good morning. Hello. How are you? #450
It is a complete waste, from a regulatory standpoint, to be an atheist.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? Feeling better today? Yes, thanks. A bit. It occurs to me that perhaps I feel down on Mondays not because they’re Mondays but because I have taken the weekend off from writing and writing, like exercise, usually makes me feel better.
My 11 AM scintillating meeting about SaaS tax laws in Texas didn’t happen — the person just didn’t show up and left us all hanging. This is always very frustrating in any situation, doubly so when you’re the paying client, but really, the worst is when you don’t want to do the meeting anyway and you’re kind of excited you might get out of it, and you’re counting the seconds of the fifteen minutes until you can plausibly hang up and assume they’re not coming, but also you’re super bummed because you know you’re just going to have to reschedule the meeting, and now you had to keep dreading it, or at least thinking about it, instead of just being done with it.
In the end, it happened around 2PM and it was actually somewhat fascinating. Tax law, man. Absurd.
I had a wee bout of insomnia last night, reading Genesis P-Orridge’s Nonbinary, and reminiscing about my starving artist days and acting like that guy in Lost thinking “we have to go back we have to go back!” What am I doing with my life, etc. etc. The usual. Nothing too bad. I think I got five hours of sleep. But whatever. What does it matter. Not like I’ll be running a marathon today. Everything has happened before, everything will happen again. I was thinking that there are two opposing forces: if I think of my whole life, as a single, long piece, things are fine. I’ve always had this supreme confidence I will live to a ripe old age, and assuming that is true, even a two-year period of staying in the house, raising this beautiful girl, and working the same job is totally just fine. They are long-haul accomplishments.
But then there is the opposing force of you could die at any moment and there is still so much to do. Genesis tells this terrifying story of how when he was young he went off of steroids, and immediately slipped into a coma and almost died because his adrenal gland had stopped working after a decade of cortisone treatments. And he woke up and thought “I could die at any moment, I’ve got to do everything I want right now.” And I’ve had that thought, maybe once, maybe twice, but generally speaking, I’m the opposite. Confident I’m gonna live forever.
One epiphany that has served me well through the years was that if you want to do everything, there are some things you need to get started on right now. Like, if you want grandkids in your life, you need to, you know, have kids, and do it at an age where you’re young enough to see those grandkids. You can’t put it off forever. Or if you want to have a twenty-year body of work in something, well, you better get started. The downside is I have to remind myself constantly that those projects are happening, they are ongoing right now, even if at this moment, in the thick of it, they don’t seem like things that are happening.
Anyway. I’m sleepy.
Here’s a fun chart:
Two straight weeks of COVID hospitalizations rapidly increasing in North Carolina. Doubling, in fact. I’ve been watching this chart for over a year. It peaked in the 1,600s at the worst of it. In June it was down to the mid 400’s. The drop to the 400’s was rapid and amazing. The doubling in the last two weeks has been even more rapid. I feel like this is happening everywhere? I feel like this is the real deal and a big deal and… maybe we should stop opening everything up? I mean, I am obviously 100% pro vaccine “passports” (read: cards), but we don’t seem to be doing that. We seem to just be announcing more events. It is so hard. Everyone desperately, desperately wants, needs the world to open back up. People’s pocketbooks are depleted, artists haven’t performed in over a year. Everyone planned for this to be over by this summer, worked for a year to plan their re-emergence in society timed to this summer’s depletion of the virus but it is just not working out that way.
And it’s going to get worse this fall, isn’t it.
I don’t know. I mean, I guess if the kids could all get vaccinated we might as well say “fuck it” and just live with it. And I guess that’s what the world without kids is doing. And hey maybe it’s time that the world runs itself to the diktats of the childless, lord knows the deck’s been stacked against them most of the time.
The FTC has unanimously voted to uphold and enforce “right to repair” laws. Some of these laws have already been on the books for ages but not enforced very much — funny how Republicans always do that even though they’re the “law and order” party and say we should “enforce the laws we do have.” Did you know it’s illegal for a company to void your warranty because you opened up their product and tinkered with it? Well, it is. Of course, no one wants you to know that. Anyway, the FTC is taking the position that all devices should be able to be tinkered with and repaired by human individuals and you should be able to get them repaired by anyone and not locked into their ecosystem. The underlying commentary of this vote, these laws, the whole shebang is: AHEM APPLE.
I used to be so very into RTR laws. Like 100% for them. But I think, now, I have tempered my opinions. I think that basically, every organization, from the government, to open source communities, to private companies, has let us down when it comes to information security, and they we live in a completely compromised infosec environment. And while I used to buy the Wired mantra of “open source means additional eyeballs and additional security,” the fact of the matter is every single philosophical or systemic approach humanity has taken to making the internet and our technology secure has been an abject failure. Edward Snowden wrote a good piece about this this week. And it seems folly to consider right-to-repair laws in the absence of the infosec considerations. Apple devices are by no means secure, as we’ve seen with the recent NSO debacle, but they are definitely more secure. While I respect the Right to Repair movement and its aims, it seems absolutely insane to me to force Apple to let people, and their hackers, physically open up their phones, and/or replace the OS with a fresh piece of hot garbage OS built off of TikTok users or some shit.
Yet at the same time, there is daylight between Apple’s position of “no one can add anything to the phone without us taking a cut” and “open the whole thing up to anyone and anything.” Apple could, if it wanted, or if it were ordered by the courts, open up the phone to competing app stores by publishing a technical spec and requirements for competing app stores, and instituting the necessary policies and audit structure. Just bring the whole existing scheme up one level from the app, to the app store. That seems fairly straightforward. Hell, perhaps even to the OS level, certifying OSs somehow. It seems to me that right-to-repair and Apple’s position are both somewhat extremist, and there is room for common sense, convenience and security in the middle, somehow. But I don’t see anyone discussing this in any realistic way.
It is not a super reassuring initial signal from Biden’s new much-vaunted savvy FTC to see this step taking so rashly, or at least without any commentary or evident thought behind the infosec ramifications, especially in an era where our world runs on this stuff and hacking has been weaponized to this extent.
In other news, Toyota can go screw. Seriously, fuck those guys. I mean, yes, okay, sure, the Prius was an amazing piece of technology. But since then? Big ole nope. First we have them being the largest donors to the Jan 6 conspiracy assholes in congress. They got caught doing that, so they stopped, but… they did it to begin with. But now we see a fairly clear picture of why they did it, which is because they have significantly ramped up their efforts at slowing down the country and world’s migration to electric cars, all because they are behind in electric cars because they bet on the wrong horse with hydrogen fuel cells waaaah waaaaaah waaaaah. I mean. These fucking guys. Largest car company in the world. I’m sure they “invested significantly” in hydrogen fuel cells, good for them, but this company was capitalized to the moon compared to Tesla. If they actually cared about the future they could have easily outspent Tesla on top of their fuel cell investment. They could have invested in both, very easily. But they did not. Because they didn’t care. They bet wrong, and now, instead of taking their licks, ramping up their electric R&D budget, and playing catch up, they’re trying to slow the whole world down. I mean, I thought Mercedes Benz was bad last week when they were like “oh hey we think the world might need electric cars we’re gonna start thinking about that in three years” but at least they weren’t actively trying to slow the world down. Jesus.
And, I am not watching them, but apparently Toyota has its grubby paws all over the Olympics, spending tons of money pretending hydrogen fuel cells are a viable contender in the short term.
In a horrifying move, I am compelled to report on these antics by Amy Covid Bash, and her efforts to stake out a middle ground in the hundred-year long battle between the various interpretations of the religious freedom clause. I am further horrified to report that this guy’s theory about what she’s thinking, while unproven, may actually make some sense? I am super not into it, desperately wanted to close the window and say “fuck that yang,” like I used to say all the time in the early 90’s, but I forced myself to finish the article and, yeah, I can see it. It is crazy to me that 250 years into being a country and we still haven’t sorted out some basic stuff about the constitution. Like it seems fairly clear to be the founding fathers did not think to themselves “we should totally make a country where people can make up religions to get around any laws whatsoever that we pass,” yet that is the logical end interpretation of what is on the page. I am starting to think that while the Founding Fathers were not individual idiots, their collective output was kinda shitty. It is so obvious the Constitution is not a perfect thing, it is a crappy-ass compromise. We’d recognize it in a heartbeat in the corporate world. The Constitution is a Zune. It is a Homer Car. It is a glorious exercise of kicking the biggest problems down the road.
Once I started thinking about the constitution this way, the problems with it are everywhere. We have a bunch of a-hole Republicans right now, in Arizona, who seem to have latched onto a great new way to subvert the constitution through a combination of the courts, physical intimidation, endless lawsuits and weird fake audits. In hindsight, all of this seems completely doable according to the constitution, and they were as nefarious and crooked about their elections back then as they are now. They could have been able to see it and, you know, actually protect the rights to vote in the constitution but, nah, that wouldn’t have gotten through the convention because a significant number of founding fathers didn’t really care about elections. Fantastic.
Anyway, Covid Bash’s interpretations seems to be that the strict scrutiny approach to federal laws and religious freedoms — the approach most conservatives want — might be a bridge too far, since strict scrutiny is almost impossible to achieve in the courts. But she also thinks that the current approach of non discrimination — the approach liberals, and I, like, where the Feds can pass any law so long as it is not intentionally discriminatory towards a specific religion — isn’t enough. And I have to concede, she has a point. Nowhere in the constitution does it say the right to religious freedom is only a right to protection from discrimination. It is an affirmative freedom. Freedom is more than protection from discrimination. She’s not wrong. You could argue the constitution is dumb about some things (and I do!) but that seems a relatively reasonable way of interpreting what is actually written. She’s saying the government must have a reason, but not a super strict one. An “important scrutiny” level. “Substantial.”
It brings me no joy to write that much about Amy Covid Bash, who should not be on the courts, and it wasn’t universally negative. I do not in any way maintain hope she will turn out to be one of those justices that is appointed by Republican presidents that turn out to be banes of their existence, but at least there’s a glimmer of hope she won’t be a raging conservative psychopath on every topic under the sun.
It also occurs to me that it is a complete waste, from a regulatory standpoint, to be an atheist, because it’s clear in this country that, at least for the next few decades, you will get a nice get-out-of-jail-free card from the Feds for having a religion. I may as well join some religion that believes in the thing I most hate about our laws. It’s a free pass, just sitting there. Seems silly not to take it.
I miss my anvil. Was watching Mythbusters last night and they were using their anvil and I thought “I used to have one of those I lugged it around through like five house moves where did it go, I wonder, when did I lose it.” I am sad not to have my anvil anymore. I should get a new one, but the only realistic way to obtain an anvil is by wandering around local antique shops, due to the weight, and I won’t be doing that any time soon. So hey. New thing to look forward to, post pandemic. I can get a new anvil.
Let’s do a mix. A Post rock mix! There’s a new Mono! Very exciting. Rounded out this post rock mix I’ve been working on for quite a while. Oh shit I just realized it has two songs from the new Godspeed You Black Emperor! on it. Oh well. We’re going to run with that. It’s like the old days, when you were 16 and making a mix and you only had like nine CDs in your collection so you had to put multiple songs on them. Bring back that feeling for the 21st century.
ALL RIGHT. Tuesday. Let’s do this. Have a lovely day!