Good morning! Hello there, how’s it going what is new? I am good. It is 7:43 in the morning, running a smidge behind. My fingers are gloriously arthritic as I slide into becoming an old man. I am listening to the legendary Don Lennon and his hit song “Really Dave Matthews,” because I was on a conference call yesterday and someone mentioned Dave Matthews.
I have a hodge-podge of old items from my list of GMHHAY that are all old now, and never fully developed into full items, so I am doing to just clear them all out in this “news dump” of a Tuesday. Here we go:
When I was at RDU waiting to fly to LGA last week, I was sitting at the gate, and one of those wigglers came and sat down next to me. You know, the ones who are fidgety and shake their leg while they sit. And it seems to be a universal truth of all airport bench seating that if one person in a six-person bench does some fidgeting, everyone on the bench is going to feel it. This dude was literally making me motion sick while we were just sitting in the terminal. I had forgotten about that. L’enfer c’est les autres, etc. etc.
I did at some point get around to reading that Jeremy Strong profile and honestly… it was fine? It seemed there was a paradox at the center of that article. It was clearly deeply reported, that journalist really dug. And, honestly, I think that’s fine. The New Yorker did, let us remember, publish a fairly fawning, under-reported profile of Elizabeth Holmes, like weeks before the truth broke, and they did not get near enough shit for it. They ought to spend a little time on these and get to the bottom of things and, you know, a large profile in The New Yorker isn’t, like, a right or anything. BUT it feels like that digging actually kinda helps Strong? Like yeah, it seems like he might be a bit much to take on set, a bit over the top. But you can just feel in that profile that if he was a true monster, the profile would have found out. He comes off as a bit self-serious and a slave to the art at all costs and, yeah, that’s fine. ALSO I feel very bad for him because you can tell he was very excited about getting this profile, and tried really hard and that kinda backfired. Who among us doesn’t secretly wonder how they hell they would navigate the process of an in-depth New Yorker profile? Seems terrifying.
In a fun mashup of worlds, Substack profiled Emma’s college friend, our dear friend Mia Billetdeaux about her wonderful Substack Borscht for Breakfast about food and culture. I think it’s just great that the first person I know that got the Substack highlight treatment was not one of my tech friends but a “real-world” friend. Congratulations, Mia.
I just want you guys to know that every day, when I cross-post this email to Facebook, and then in the comments, I post the link back to the email version of this newsletter, I remove all of the tracking parameters from the URL. Manually. Every day. I do that because I love you.
Last week, right before I left for New York, everyone in the posh neighborhood down the road freaked out and thought they saw a UFO and the Nextdoor postings were just fantastic. One of them had the subject line: “I am NOT insane or drunk this was REAL.” It took em a while, but they got there and finally figured out that they all saw a SpaceX Starlink launch.
Rogue 1 is the best Star Wars movie fight me.
In honor of Barbarian Group’s 20th anniversary, I would like to say that one thing I profoundly miss in life is TBG’s naming process. Whenever we needed the name of a new product or site or campaign or something, the creative lead would send an email out to the entire company with a sort of mini-brief of what they needed a name for, and everyone in the company would just start emailing the whole list with possible names. Sometimes they would go into absurdist or dark directions, but every single time, within an hour or two, the company’s hive mind would come up with a really awesome name. And I miss that ability so much and I have never been able to name anything ever again. I don’t know why more companies do this and the great thing about it is that as time goes on, the company gets better at it, even as it gets bigger.
I bought a cartoon witch on the internet because I am probably insane and in the end the cartoon witch was revealed to me and it was the spitting image of known witch Emily Taylor (and excellent namer of things like this newsletter), specifically around the age where we used to date, so, yeah, I think these witch people might have something going on.
I think about Sliding Doors all the time and I am willing to bet some of you do too and so before I re-watch it, I figured I’d ask you guys if it is worth re-watching. Also is Sliding Doors a trope like Groundhog Day? Are there, like, five other movies with the same premise? A sci fi one like Live Die Repeat fka Edge of Tomorrow? Because Sliding Doors seems like a perfect trope, a timeless conceit, and I am sort of shocked I can’t think of, like, five other movies like that. I guess maybe It’s a Wonderful Life but that seems a smidge different. But are there any others? Cuz I kind of want to watch them all.
Yesterday I had a great conversation with somebody that clearly catalyzed in me pretty clearly how and when web3 will get ruined by corporate interests just like web2 did and part of me wants to go cynically raise like a hundred million and just do it but I want you all to know that I am not gonna do it. And neither is this guy. But I can see pretty clearly how it will happen. Probably. I can feel an essay coming on. But I will probably spare you guys I started yet another blogging account over at the crypto blogging site mirror.xyz I’ll probably just post it there instead so you guys will be spared.
I bought a share of Packer’s stock like two weeks ago and I am very excited about it. Aaron Rodgers seems like a tool but I like the socialist cut of their jib, the Packers, even if it is all an illusion of socialism since rich people still control the team and we don’t get anything for our stock. It’s kind of like cosplaying socialism. Like socialism in the metaverse will be.
These two dudes in Arizona had a great scam going where they just told YouTube that they were the rights holders to all of these songs and then collected the royalties. To be clear, this is a distinct scam, unrelated to the New York Times journalist who may or may not have been scamming artists out of their digital rights and collecting their royalties. I’ve been too lazy to dig into the Times guy and figure out definitively whether it’s true or not, but I will say, if it is true, he really made way too much work for himself, actually setting up a fake charity and tricking people to actually sign their rights over. Turns out you don’t need to bother with any of that! You can just tell YouTube you own the rights and they’ll believe you and start paying. Fantastic. The internet is absurd. In the real world you gotta show your driver’s license to buy a vape, but on the internet you can just take someone’s livelihood away by filling out a form. Love it.
This is not really old but we started Wheel of Time and Only Murders in the Building and they are both great.
Okay that’s kind of exciting. All of those items were just lingering in my subject list for ages and it was getting all clogged and crufty and now it is as clean and fresh as a spring daisy.
Jane was a pain last night at bedtime for me, the usual stalling and fits, but I got her to go the potty with me three times throughout the day, and she successfully peed on the potty twice with me. She was already doing this with mommy, and neither one of us can consistently get her to poop on the potty, but this is still a major milestone, because she was holding it in for hours at time, waiting for mommy, and it meant I often had to go get mommy so she would pee, and that kind of ruins the point of me watching Jane as often as possible to make up for my weeklong absense. So, progress. Also no poop accidents for a few days now. She is still just waiting till evening and pooping in her night time diaper. She’s on to us. But we are making progress, we are making progress. Also she’s really into this red bow right now.
Okay! Today’s mix is a shoegaze mix, vol 21. Man we have been doing this a long time. Man I wonder if this pandemic will ever be over. Man there are a lot of shoegaze bands out there, that is awesome.
Okay! Talk tomorrow!
i’m watching a Sliding Doors-esque thriller right now with Sandra Bullock: Premonition. It’s not great, but has that dual timeline vibe….
Wait is that a witch NFT?