Good morning. Hello. How are you? #490
Updates! Leg update, 2006 Old Navy nine-inch brown bear update, PS5 update, LGA Airtrain update, weird stock update, scary computer incident, Oxford Histories of the US and UK,
Good morning! Hello there how are you what is going on maaaan. I am listening to Godspeed You Black Emperor!’s seminal album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven and I forgot about this weird Coney Island spoken word thing on the beginning of side three.
“They don’t sleep anymore on the beach.”
It is raining and I am happy about it, my plants are happy about it, I don’t have to spend 30 minutes watering plants, and Jane is very excited about the rain when we look out of her bedroom window and she says hi to Grammy’s house. No walking in the evening, but that is okay I have my trusty treadmill.
Oh hey big news my bruise from my leg injury is almost gone. Like you can barely see it. Another day or two max. So, four weeks of bruising. Crazy. Leg is mostly healed, now it’s time to, like, figure out what stretches to do to regain the range of mobility. I am so glad this nightmare is almost over.
Update on my 2006 Old Navy nine-inch brown bear market cornering. The woman behind the current eBay auction turned on offers. I offered $25. She countered with $45. The nerve. Also, my friend Taylor alerted me to two additional 2006 Old Navy nine-inch brown bear auctions on eBay. They weren’t triggered by my eBay alert because one was labeled as a 2007 Old Navy brown bear, the amateur, and one was inacurately labeled as ten inches. I made an offer on the other one that had offers turned on, they haven’t answered yet. So, so far, all three of these bears are still on offer for more than $40 which is just too much, we’re Methodists, when you already have 3 of the things.
In the other big news from yesterday, I finally sucessfully obtained a Playstastion 5, after like fifteen failed attempts. I ended up getting it off of Amazon, on a Prime Subscribers only offering so, like, yeah, all that time spent on Ant Online and Sony Direct and Walmart and Sam’s Club and GameStop and like six more… in the end it was Amazon. Shocking. At least I’ll get some good points. Anyway, I’m kind of excited but I suppose now it’s a bit like the dog who caught the car since, like, I don’t really play video games and have no idea what the interesting or hot video games are on the PS 5? I will have to research. And, of course, I don’t really have “trying to buy a PS5” as a hobby anymore. I will miss you, sweet hobby. Provided the whole thing actually works. I mean, they sent an oder confirmation, but you never know. Feels like they could still change their mind and say “lol nope.”
Another update. Back when the Chinese government fucked over Didi right after their anti-authoritarian IPO, I decided to YOLO and buy one hundred whole dollars of Didi stock on the assumption that the international Didi might just go rogue and sever its ties from the Chinese Didi and… just keep operating in the several non-Chinese markets in which it operates, such as South America, Japan, Australia, Russia and South Africa. And while nothing so dramatic as that has happened, in the end Didi is only down 32%, which, I mean, is a lot, but, like, considering the entire Chinese government came down on you and basically called your company illegal? I mean, it could definitely be worse? Normal boring American companies lose 30% of their stock price on bad news all the time. That being said, it is by far the worst stock in my portfolio, well, my real one. Over in my $10 Robinhood portfolio, there are several stocks that have performed worse than Didi. Some are also Chinese companies, like Nio and Alibaba, but others are not, like Zillow, ETFMG, Big Commerce, Wilammette Valley Vinyards and Momentus. Wow yeah that’s a lot of bad stocks I am not good at picking stocks luckily I know this and don’t spend a lot of money on it. And luckily my YOLO on Moderna offset all of those. My main portfolio is up 48% total, which is nice, even with some losers like Didi, Zevia, Weber, and Ford, all of which are bummers since I like those companies. I will keep holding. I don’t know why I’m talking about stocks this morning I don’t really day trade it is not my thing.
I had a scary incident Monday with my computer. I decided my main computer password needs to change. Like, I mean, I ONLY use it for machines, not for anything else, and only Macs, obviously, not iOS devices, since those are numerical passcodes. So, the password is only in use in like three places, the three Macs I use around the house. So it’s unlikely to get compromised. But I’ve been using the same one so long it really does feel like it’s time to retire it. So I came up with a new word and changed the password on my main user account on my main Mac. It asked me to type it in twice. And somehow, I managed to type it in exactly the same, both times, but exactly wrong. So I come back from lunch and type in my password, muscle memory has me type in the old one. Nope, the computer does that cute little head-shake of the password dialog box (man that is some nice design). Oh right, new password, I think. I type in the new one. Nope. I freak out. I type, like, twenty iterations, different capitalizations, typos, misspellings. Nothing works. I freak out more. I’m gonna lose my entire main workstation and, I mean, I back shit up but this is not good. Eventually I remember I have two test accounts on my machine — a non-admin one and an admin one. Thank god. I have to restart, then I log in with the admin test account, and change the password on my main account back to the old one. I log in and it works, thank god, only it’s logged me out of everything. Like every app — messages, Slack, ToDoist, every website — Facebook, Twitter, all my system-level email accounts. It took hours to get things set up again. But I’m so thankful I managed to get back in. God. Now, of course, I’m too scared to change the password again. I can’t believe I did that. Mortifying.
So a bunch of people have sued the FAA in an attempt to stop the Laguardia AirTrain boondoggle. Of course now that loser Cuomo is out of the governor’s office, everyone is pressing Governor Hochul to kill the thing, and apparently she’s considering it, but they figured hey let’s throw a lawsuit into the mix as well. I am not generally speaking a lover of lawsuits but they obviously have their uses from time to time, and I suppose killing off a multi-billion dollar idiotic plan rammed down everyone’s throats by a harassing, meglomaniacal madman with delusions of Mosesism is a decent use. I really want this thing to die. I don’t know what it is. It is so obvious the route needs to be an extension of the NQ from Astoria it just… it just feels like America’s last stand on standing up to Nimbyism? Like, it’s not even a hard one its a softball it’s two fucking blocks underneath a public road until you get to the ConEd lot and the water. It’s insane. It’s depressing. I want to, like, actually be able to take this train when I come to town for work. Obviously I’m never going to take a train to Willet’s point who would do that. No one. Apparently that’s the basis of this lawsuit — the builders hid a bunch of research they did that said no one would use this and it will be slower than taking a taxi.
We shall see, we shall see.
So I’m still reading this What Hath God Wrought book, US history from 1815 to 1848. It is good stuff. Last night I read a chapter on the history of colleges in the US, from the twelve universities that existed in America before the declaration of independence to the explosion of protestent-founded schools in the decades after, to the first stirrings of the public colleges funded by the states. Here in NC, the University of the road, UNC, likes to say it was America’s first public university, but turns out that is sort of a dubious thing, like William and Mary beat them by a hundred years, but it wasn’t public then it became public later, and Georgia was chartered earlier, but didn’t have students yet.
I’m not quite done, I mean, the thing is 900 pages, but I’m already kind of sad about how I will be done soon. I picked this book after reading some early history of the US. I don’t remember which, it was a while back, maybe Jill Lepore’s These Truths, and I was sad and wanted to read more. And so I found this book for a good summation of the time between the founding and the Civil War. At the time, though, I didn’t know it was part of something called The Oxford History of the United States, which seems pretty interesting. Like these dudes dreamed it up in the 1960’s and people are still working on it. Turns out it’s really hard to coordinate with, like, ten different authors to write books about specific times in American history. God, image the project management nightmares on this baby. Takes a long time to write a book, people die, people have disagreements and then you gotta pick a new author. Editors die. So, now, here it is, like fifty years since the project started, and nine of the books are done, with three more to come. One is coming out next year. Two more, the first two in the series, chronologically, are still TBA.
But anyway, the one right after What Hath God Wrought is done and out, it was out way before this one. It, too, won the Pulitzer. And while I’m not really, like, dying to read a 900 page book about the Civil War, I think I might? If only so I could continue after it with The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896 by Richard White that seems very interesting. Oh god I’m becoming one of those old people who just reads history books. I can’t help it they’re always so interesting most people really have no idea how we got here or what’s going on and I feel like they are constantly applicable to modern times? Or maybe that’s just what boring old people think.
Anyway, at least I’m not reading the New Oxford History of England, 12 volumes dating back to 1075CE. Although that seems really, really fun. Even though they’re still missing three volumes I mean how can you claim to know English history if you don’t get the lowdown from 1461 to 1547?
Let’s do a mix. Industrial dance mix. There’s even some new stuff on here there is a track on the new Garbage that would not have felt out of place at 1993 Man Ray, a new Godflesh that harkens back to their more industrial Slavestate era, a new Ministry track that is kind of good, and a new band called History that is pretty awesome. Well, newish. This is a good mix for an aggro day, have an aggro day!
Oh wow it’s getting late this one took a long time I need to go get Jane. Have a lovely day! Like Truman said if I don’t see you have a lovely morning, afternoon and good night and oh shit I might have to watch The Truman Show again ASAP.
Whoops forgot the playlist link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ZaqvQiixdx4oD5cahN7Wa?si=1d84d48911374fc8
Thanks for the tip on the history books. I am one of those old people who read history (not exclusively but a lot) and always looking for recommendations.
Actually I was one of those young people who read history too. Not only but yeah, a lot. 🤓