Good morning. Hello. How are you? #574
Breyer, Ukraine, Powell, DeFi just a whole mess of topics I have zero qualifications to talk about. And Mandalorians, which I am, not that you wanna hear me go on about Pre Vizla and the Deathwatch.
Good morning! Hello! How are you? I am pissed. I keep ordering hella expensive lightbulbs for this five-armed floor lamp in my office, and they keep not being right. First ones weren’t dimmable. Second ones wereR dimmable, but they sent me the wrong color temperature. It is so maddening. The thing is way up high and has five bulbs and it takes forever to change them and then I have to take them all out when it’s wrong, so I am going on my sixth time changing the bulbs now, that is assuming this next order of bulbs is actually correct. Color temperature, man. It’s a beast.
Book of Boba Fett was crazy last night, Bryce Dallas Howard is a marvelous director, Sean is 100% right that Robert Rodriguez is a bad match for Star Wars—which is totally not something I would have guessed, but his episodes are easily the weakest. Bryce Dallas Howard deserves her own Star Wars show she has directed some of the best episodes of The Mandalorian and now probably the best episode of Book of Boba Fett. Give her all of Obi Wan. Real unsung success in the world of actors-turned-directors, Bryce Dallas Howard. And really paving the way for ginger directors. Name another major ginger director.
My feet are cold. Constantly. It is ridiculous. Right now I am wearing huge winter socks, warm slippers, and have a space heater pointed right at them. They’re still cold. I bought a heating mat, per Alexeis’ recommendation, but it arrived DOA. I am finally getting around to returning it and getting it replaced. I have a theory that what’s really happening is my calves are cold, and somewhere in this house I have a pair of leg warmers and I want to find them and put them on today, that’ll be fun, I miss my leg warmers. I know all of this is a circumstance of the winter combined with the diet. Today I hit 20 pounds lost on the diet, that is nice. Now let’s just triple that and I should be in pretty good shape. Also why don’t people diet in the summer when it would be awesome to be cold all the time.
Stephen Breyer retired, thank god. I mean, now that he’s gone ahead and actually done the right thing I guess we can say nice things about him again. Thank you for your service, Stephen Breyer. Orrin Hatch, thank you for recommending Stephen Breyer to Bill Clinton. There’s a thing that would never, ever, ever happen today. Republicans recommending solid, qualified candidates instead of unqualified, sometimes rapey political stooges. People are all like “oh watch we’ll find some way to fuck this confirmation up,” but honestly, Mitch McConnell is not a god, he has limits, this should be fine. Gulp. Fingers crossed. Genuinely excited about the prospect of a black woman on the highest court. I will now immediately and promptly become an expert on all of the qualified black judges out there and have strong opinions on them. No fuck that, my opinion is hard core liberal and as young as humanly possible. Preferably, like, 40. Old enough we know they won’t secretly turn conservative (because, honestly, you can see it coming in your friends by 40, can’t you), but young enough we get a good, like, 40 years of service out of them or more.
Been watching the situation in the Ukraine with some trepidation, as one does when there is a potential World War III brewing. I have thoughts. They are not particularly brilliant but you are going to get them anyway. First, I agree with this Atlantic article that Putin is no grand chess master. And Fiona Hill’s assessment of the situation cleared up a lot of questions for me, as in why Putin is doing this now, instead of under the Trump administration, when Trump would have let him invade Ukraine. He doesn’t want to invade, he wants something from the west for not invading, Trump would have obviously gone “it’s fine, whatever, take it, that’s easier for me,” and he sees Biden as more internationalist and horny for treaties, which is totally true. But he also sees Biden as weak and chicken, mayhaps owing to his part in Obama’s roll over on the Crimea. I think he’s wrong here for a few reasons: first, he conflates Biden with Obama too much, Biden was always a more forceful internationalist by inclination than Obama, who defaulted towards restraint. Next, Putin has vastly underestimated the increased attention the American public places on the Ukraine after the Trump impeachment drama. This is a more vague angle, but I think it’s relevant. Everyone is watching now, people are more aware of Ukraine’s importantance and Putin’s cronyism, both thanks to Trump. Next he views Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan as weakness and a bias towards confrontation avoidance, but that is a misread of Biden’s withdrawal, which obviously took extreme political fortitude and guts.
Putin’s between a rock and a hard spot, and he has to go soon, because what (decreasing) leverage he has over Europe will be gone as the weather warms up and they don’t need his natural gas as much, and of course Putin needs their cash from natural gas way more than they need his gas, as the US scrambles to make up the shortfall, and the weather has been mild.
Of course I’m just an armchair general but hey at least I actually went to school for this stuff, took classes from an American ambassador to the Ukraine, ran wargames sims in school on exactly this region, and can now, again, find every country on the map. So, maybe a deskchair general.
My prescription to the situation is that if Putin invades, immediately bomb and completely destroy his billion-dollar secret palace on the Black Sea, which was wholly constructed from stolen funds. The average Russian may will find the whole situation kind of funny. And it would hit him, and just him. It’s also relatively technically easy, we could do it from naval assets in the Black Sea in Turkish and Georgian waters. It would be a humiliating embarrssment for Putin, personally pin this insanity on him, not the country, would not be an escalation of the war, and would have the added benefit of, you know, minimizing casualties. I suppose this wouldn’t really stop him—the bastard is already in for a penny, in for a pound, with no ability to turn around. But it would definitely have an impact. It’s, like, the only thing on the planet the dude obviously cares for.
Jerome Powell gave a nice speech yesterday and said what everyone wanted to hear: that we’re not messing with interest rates just yet, but that this inflation thing is going to have to get dealt with so we are probably raising them soon, so get ready. Everyone cheered mightily and said “hear hear” (or is it “here here”? I will never know) and clapped like they were Victorian businesmen with big bushy side beards, and the stock market magically stopped falling for a bit because nothing is real lol. So, good job magicians you did your wizarding well for a day. Shame bitcoin doesn’t have a wizard. Oh right, central banks are bad, wizards are bad, Satoshi Nakamato why do you hate wizards why are you anti-wizard.
Speaking of which there’s this guy on YouTube, The Calculator Guy, who talks about Defi and making money with all of these weird-ass coins on weird-ass blockchains. Don’t worry this is not a thing I am into or want to get into, I just want to learn. Anyway, he has this decent series, “introduction to DeFi” that is a very good primer. But the hilarious thing is in one of them, part 5, he goes through how almost every DeFi-specific coin has gone down to almost zero in value over time. He does not personally see this as a problem, he personally tries to stick to Eth, BTC, USDC, Tether—coins that, in his view, have other uses. But it was actually kind of shocking, his summation of the situation: all of these coins only exist to be sold, there is no use for them to buy them, their whole purpose is to be sold, they will all, always, only go down. And it was so weird because he did not see this as an indictment of the whole system. He was just, like, “so remember that and be careful while you continue to invest in this ecosystem of universally-declining currency! have fun!” It was a remarkably insightful analysis with… absolutely zero self-awareness.
And, finally, yesterday seems to have been the day that I finally stop signing my emails. Have you done this? Like I’m just treating email like chat now. Most you get is a couple lines, unsigned. I used to write the longest fucking emails. I still have a few long-ass emails in my inbox. I can’t deal. I can answer an email with a line or two, tops. It is chat. Coming to this realization has been great, because it’s really made a dent in my inbox, but also it is awful because, you know, I’m not really saying much. Or am I? Shit maybe it’s not awful at all. I should probably just take the last stap and start answering the two- and three-pager emails with a sentence or two.
Also, N.B. short emails do not have to be terse. Show a little tenderness in your emails, kids. Don’t be a boomer. Man, boomers just will never learn how to be nice in emails, will they?
What mix shall we do today? I have just been listening to “Haunted House” by McKenna Grace on repeat for days now. And all of them have already made it onto mixes. Oh but! The Pooka album is on Spotify now. Well, there are lots of Pooka albums, and only one is on Spotify now, the one that I have loved for 25 years. It is so good. So you get this moody and quiet mix that not only includes my favorite Pooka song, it also includes solo songs by each of Pooka’s amazing women, Natasha Lea Jones and Sharon Lewis. I wish they hadn’t broken up but their solo stuff is great too. As an added bonus you get Warren Buffett’s kid and the big hit by AC Marias.
OH speaking of Spotify, I am 100% behind Neil Young’s bailing on Spotify because of Joe Rogan, and I hope that 100 top artists do it as well, because it is 100% guaranteed that if a hundred top artists do this, and that group includes one, if not two, of BTS, Beyoncé, Adele or Taylor, the stock will take a nosedive (god, especially in this economy), they will successfully wipe out a good couple bil, minimum, from Spotify’s bottom line, and while Neil Yong doesn’t make Spotify enough money to bail on Joe Rogan, a good 5-10 bil off of their already reduced market cap absolutely will.
I would personally switch right now, if I thought you guys would all listen to mixes on Apple Music as much. Do you care? What are your thoughts? Should I just switch? I already use Apple Music in the home and keep the two synched.
It is Thursday, which means its my Friday because we have a company recharge day tomorrow because we are not idiots and there is still a pandemic and we are not constantly telling the employees that the pandemic is over and they need to come into the office again, and we are still giving recharge days, because this is hard and unpleasant still. And Jane is at Grammy’s tonight, so I have tomorrow completely free, until I do Daddy bedtime. I’m gonna take the recycling out and I’m gonna go to Walmart and I’m gonna do my podcast and it’s all gonna be great. But first, work! Talk tomorrow.
I use Qobuz, which I very much enjoy. Also have Spotify bc my wife got it for herself and signed up for a family plan. The two drawbacks to Qobuz: it has a pretty bad CarPlay version, and also it's 'Recently Played' tile oddly doesn't go back far. But it has great sound quality and original writeups of new releases.
I've been thinking for years of getting off of Spotify just because of the low royalty rates for artists. I try to buy enough physical and Bandcamp music to support the artists I really care about, but it still doesn't make up for what Spotify does. And this Rogan thing gives me all the more incentive to do something. Any thoughts on Tidal vs. Apple music if I were to switch?