Good morning. Hello. How are you? #495
Treadmill setup, iFIT ripoff, grocery shortages, NFT skepticism, a cat with its tongue stuck out.
Good morning! Hello! How are you? What’s up? Everything going okay? Are the key relationships in your life in a healthy place? Have you told everyone you love them? Man, I tell Emma and Jane I love them all the time because, you know, can’t go dying on people without having told them you love them, but it is so obviously kind of a lunatic thing to do. They are both very tolerant of it.
So I have been spending ten, fifteen minutes a day getting my treadmill all set up for maximum quality walking time in the office. I wired up my iPad and my iPhone to it, put a stylus holder on the thing, a hook for my shirt, added some towels. Then I spent a ton of time re-working my iPad from a thing for work in the New York office, because LOL, to something for use at the treadmill. I cranked up the font size, deleted all my old photos and got things working so text screenshots I took can sync to my Dropbox. I read my Safari Reading List, of which I am now making use. I used to use Instapaper but I had to declare Instapaper bankruptcy since I never got round to reading all the articles, but I’m trying again now with Safari Read Later, and it seems to be working okay. I also read all of my email subscriptions: Bloomberg Money Stuff, Import AI a bunch of Substacks and the like. I spend between a half hour and an hour walking. This is additive to our evening walk, and really I’m just trying to get all these habits in place before winter because last winter was so catastrophic for my weight. It’s going well.
The stupid $100 iFit tablet holder came in the mail last night. To recap, the company totally pulled a bait-and-switch, pretends in its catalog photos that the tablet holder actually comes with the treadmill when it doesn’t. They also cleverly don’t have the thing listed anywhere on the site as a thing for sale that you can buy, lest you, you know, put two and two together and realize it might be an add-on accessory. You have to call them, then some poor soul has to deliver the bad news: It’s $100, plus $34 shipping. I weighed it, checked the postage, it’s in a USPS Parcel Select box, ground transport, about $6 shipping. Couldn’t even spring the extra $4 for priority with your thirty five dollars shipping. Best part? The piece itself, not surprisingly, kind of sucks. It doesn’t even hold a tablet in vertical form. You can only use it horizontally because of course Americans would only want to watch moving picture content on their treadmill not, like, read, LOL, stupid Americans.
The company that perpetuates this monstrosity also just priced their IPO this week. They will be worth six billion dollars, thanks to their brisk business in forcing people to overpay for accessories and forcing people to subscribe to their IFIT software, even if they don’t want it, so that the company can claim it is a technology company like Peloton and now, like, you know, a boring old manufacturing company.
Anyway, I am trying to forget all of this because I am enjoying using the actual treadmill (which also has no USB ports for some reason, that seemed so inconceivable in a treadmill in 2021 that it literally didn’t even occur to me to check for them, or that Wirecutter would recommend a treadmill without USB ports). And I hate thinking about getting ripped off. But the exercise is nice.
Got the groceries delivered yesterday and wow they grocery store was out of a lot of shit. Like way more than usual. Like yeah this Boars’s Head shortage is sure going on a long time, but that’s one company, yesterday I think there were six or seven items they didn’t have, including… broccoli. Woah. The other day on Twitter, Alexis Ohanian tweeted something (I can’t find the link, wow, that guy Tweets a lot) about how he was “telling his LPs” (because LPs definitely invest in funds to get investment advice? Weird, okay, what do I know) that shortages were “coming back” and to not sleep on this. And I was like “LOL when’s that guy been in the grocery store there have been constant shortages” but then this news arrived from my very surly shopper at the local Harris Teeter and I thought “oh huh maybe Alexis knows something about this after all,” so I stand corrected.
But the joke’s on you, shortage, because I have not slackened or lessened my Depression-granny tendencies one iota since the pandemic. Alexis mentioned something about toilet paper in his Tweets, and I thought “LOL we still have enough toilet paper in the house to last a year you think we got over our pandemic scarring that quickly?” One of the many home innovations I implemented during the pandemic was a first-in-first-out canned food dispenser, and, just a little update here, my god I love that thing and I use it every day and I wish my whole pantry was filled with FIFO containers. I still keep a 30-pound bag of brown rice in the pantry, six jars of peanut butter, eight bottles of olive oil, etc. etc. I am not over this. So, you know, bring it shortages. Also I popped over to the other local grocery store and they had plenty of broccoli so that got sorted, never you fret.
One thing I cannot agree with Alexis on, though, are NFTs. It’s getting to be a real problem in my life, everyone is gaga about NFTs and I… I just… I can’t. I mean, I feel bad even writing this. So many people fucking love the things. They just love them. One friend yesterday said something I’ve been hearing a lot: that it reminds them of the beginning of the internet, when things were more fun, less locked down, less harsh vibes, less corporate oppression. I just do not understand this point of view. I can sort of understand kids getting into NFTs the way we got into the internet, because we didn’t know any better, because we had hubris, because we thought things would always work out, because the idea that what we were doing could end up being harmful seemed insane and highly unlikely and completely paranoid. But we were so wrong! Can you imagine, in your forties, in your fifties, thinking that again, about something else? And not, like, thinking “oh hey maybe this one could end up being just as bad as the internet. Maybe I still have a blindspot for unintended consequences?” It just feels to me like so many people don’t want to admit their mistakes? I mean, yes, I know, I work in advertising on the web, and, even worse, adtech, but my whole reason for being here is to try and fix some of those mistakes? Just a little bit? This job is penance not naïveté. I mean, lucky for me penance can be so profitable. Whatever, I digress. That line of thinking just seems weird to me.
But the biggest thing to me is the energy consumption. It’s just insane. Bitcoin and Ethereum combined use more energy than Mexico. A single Ethereum transaction uses more energy than an American household does in a week. And NFTs are playing a huge part of this. I mean, look at this:
That is insane. And yes, there’s this thing called Casper coming that will chance Ethereum from “proof of work” to “proof of stake,” and will supposedly drastically lower the energy costs. If you’re committed to living in this ecosystem and believe it’s something that has to exist, then, yes, this is a good thing, it should make a difference. When it happens. And while Proof of Work is clearly a huge part of a blockchain’s energy use, it isn’t all of it.
In any case, it just seems weird to assume that because something IS going to get fixed, it’s okay to use it now, while it is hugely environmentally destructive?
Also I just can’t find any real-world use for NFTs, and as someone who is a relentless, inveterate, to-the-bones collector, this seems… alarming? I mean I’m not the biggest gamer in the world but I know enough to know that there does not seem to be some giant problem with rare gaming loot being unauthenticatable. But I mean, I fucking love collecting. I love it so much. And I love the internet, I mean, I love it like a problem child, but I’ve been using the damn thing since the beginning I am all-in on this internet thing, for better or worse. So… what gives? Why can’t I get excited about NFTs? Seems like it's two great tastes that go great together but. It isn’t?
Yet I keep digging, there must be something here, people fucking love NFTs so much. SO MUCH. I mean, I can get into some of the more absurdist art-action NFTs that exist as dada-esque acts or to rip off the rich. That is fun. Just feel like we had a pretty good toolset for those already. What do the NFTs bring. A one-time disruption of the stale gallery system, yes, that is nice, but it will end, it is already coming to an end, the king is dead long live the king.
What am I missing?
While I’m at it, my god, people get so excited about the phrase Web3, Web 3.0. I mean, I guess I got real excited about the phrase Web 2.0, and I was wrong, so, lol, and maybe it’s lazy-ass, stupid pattern recognition on my part to assume Web3 is gonna be as much of a flameout as Web 2.0. And I guess flameout isn’t really fair, AJAX is awesome, it is still awesome, we still couldn’t live without it. And UGC, too, I mean, I like writing this newsletter, I like people reading it. Yes, I suppose lots of good things came along, it’s just… so did a lot of bad! Why do people just want to forget about this part?
What I want is a solid, compelling manifesto of Web3 that would actually get me excited. Maybe I’m dumb. I’m trying to keep an open mind here.
Anyway. That was a rant, sorry, trying to not rant too much these days.
Here is a picture of Roy with his tongue out:
Shoegaze mix today. All new except for two mid-90’s wonderful obscurities, Mellonova and Smashing Orange. My favorite Smashing Orange album is not, alas, on Spotify, but this will have to do. Mellonova were a great Canadian shoegaze band that we used to play with a lot back in the 90’s, they were great guys. Miss them. There’s a new BJM on here, that guy still makes great music, even if he seems like a lunatic. Oh crap, I put two Karate, Guns and Tanning songs on here. Oh well, they are awesome, no regrets.
TTFN!
I have a love/hate relationship with iFit. I bought a Nordic Track bike last summer at the peak of my pandemic weight gain, and since then I've dropped 30 pounds. But, iFit is one of the worst pieces of software I've ever used. There is no API to export workout data and it's really hard to search for old workout stats to check your progress as you repeat them. Worst of all, they seem to tie the web version to a different database than the tablet version. Seriously, if you look at comments on a workout, you get a different list on IOS vs. web. How can that even be?
But I do find a lot of the actual workout content to be amazing. And automatically adjusting the workout difficulty is super cool. I thought I'd gravitate towards the Peloton-like studio classes but I generally hate them. The outdoor content they provide is awesome though - they go to some really cool locations and have some really excellent trainers. Because of this, I use the bike a lot more than I ever expected and it's been great for me.