Good morning. Hello. How are you? #608
Brian Morrissey on Substack, 1k Ukraine Project, writing every day is hard.
Good morning. Hello. How are you this fine Friday? TGIF amirite? Oh wait I’m sorry that is a lie it’s not Friday, it’s just Friday for me because tomorrow is a Timehop recharge day. God, those recharge days rule.
Man, I am not really feeling up to the task of writing this thing today. Writing this five days a week is hard! Some days I am really excited about it, but other days I have nothing. But… maybe we’re almost done? Maybe this pandemic is almost done! I’ve always sort of assumed that this diary will end with the pandemic, it is a pandemic diary. Is the pandemic about to end? So many people are acting like it! But we have been in this place twice before and, lol, we’re still here. New variant brewing in Europe. Cases rising in the cities. We shall see. In 100 years, at the great universities of the world, someone is reading this book as part of the core curriculum of Jackpot 201: Global Pandemic and they’re on the edge of their seats. Is this thing almost over? is this a cliffhanger? Is there a third volume of this pandemic diary that i’m going to have to read in Jackpot 202? Can’t we just read excerpts? What kind of masochist teacher assigns a 700 page book and its sequel to an undergrad class? When can I go out and play Mars lawn darts with my other Muskians.
But, then, when I am done with this pandemic journal, I still want to write to you guys once in a while? You guys are, like, my therapist? But, therein lies a paradox, because you can only (barely) get away with writing about such utterly unimportant topics when you’re writing every day. It is a delicate balance. Really not sure what’s going to happen. Imagine writing once a week and having nothing to write about except how nice the uncoated paper is on your new seed catalog. How absolutely great this new seed catalog is because it is one color of ink on uncoated paper and it just looks so wholesome and pre-internet it almost brought a tear to your eye even though your’re doing fine I said I’m fine.
Brian Morrissey, who is a very good journalist and whom I have known a very long time, and was one of the first reporters to ever cover The Barbarian Group back in the early 21st century, wrote a very good edition of his newsletter yesterday, regarding Substack and their new app. I am not into their new app. Their new app basically aggregates all of the substacks to which you are subscribed together in a nice reader app. On top of that, it gives you the option to turn off the emails and only view the email in the app. This sucks. First, it sucks because emails, especially one like this, feel sort of personal and intimate, secondly, it spaces them out, one a day or whatever, so that you don’t get overwhelmed by seeing a bunch of them at once, and third, it’s a direct relationship from me to you, no one is getting between us. I don’t like this. So, you know, I might leave Substack. Except, as Brian pointed out, no one is probably going to use it. But then again who the hell knows because I sure don’t expect Substack to, like, actually give me stats about who turned off the emails to read in the reader.
Anyway, all of this would be solved if Apple and Gmail just put a reader view into their email apps like Apple has in its browser. What I do when I read long newsletter emails on my phone is I quickly click the “read in browser” link at the top (clicking the title usually works too), switch to my browser, and then click “show reader view.” This is because I am blind and I like large texts and emails are usually very small text and impossible to make bigger. I suppose it’s conceivable the Substack app solves this but it has been my experience it’s usually not till version one million or so that an app thinks about text size and bothers to a) implement the OS-level text size flag or b) offer larger text within the app, so I’m not holding my breath there.
Anyway, I hope you keep reading my emails in your email, like I’m sending it straight to you, and it’s not part of some platform, where, eventually, they decide to start curating the emails that show up in your app, and helping you discover more and suddenly the whole thing is roped back into algorithmic miasma.
I realized last night that after April 1st that Mercury Rev will also be a band I saw in the 90’s, 00’s, 10’s and 20’s. So that is exciting. Then there will be two. I also realized that there is a Heroes dance night on April 1st, so I will go to that after Mercury Rev, I doubt I’ll even stay for all of Brian Jonestown Massacre unless, you know, it turns out to be one of their best shows ever, although I just looked at my list and it looks liek they, too, will become a band I have seen in all four decades that night, so that is something. Two birds with one stone. Well that is kind of exciting.
Jane called me “dad” the other day. I think this was something she picked up from her Facetime date with her friend the other day and I am NOT having it. I didn’t expect her to start calling me dad for, like, you know, another eight years or so? Kids, they grow up so fast. Anyway, I just calmly ignored it and didn’t feed it at all and it seems to have passed and she’s back to saying “daddy” now. Whew. That was alarming.
Oh shit it’s Saint Patrick’s day this explains why my mom was texting me weird stuff about “The Wearing of the Green” last night suddenly that entire conversation makes a lot more sense. Well I guess that’s cool, I do have some Irish in me, my mother’s maiden name being Coghlan and all. Also reminds me I gotta watch that Belfast movie maybe I’ll do that today in honor of the Irish. I guess I sort of regret not putting on that army green The New Year t-shirt this morning. Maybe I’ll go change. I did just rip the under-arm on this sweet Spectrum shirt I’m wearing because every t-shirt in the world is too narrow in the arms unless they’re a tent that is just a low of physics. Yeah I do not have a lot of value to add to the St. Patrick’s Day discourse.
Finally, yesterday I took part in the 1k Project for Ukraine. It is a project founded by an old tech acquaintance of mine, Alex Iskold, that’s been around for a while, but was re-purposed to aid Ukrainian refugees, as Alex himself is Ukrainian. Essentially you directly support a specific Ukrainian refugee family. I almost did it like two weeks ago, but the transfer app they use, Wise, stressed me out. But then I got over myself, and it turns out Wise is very good, very well-built, and I like it a lot. Like I might just use it for every wire from here on out. Anyway, if you have the means, I strongly suggest participating. It is VERY satisfying when they text you with a family name and you send your money directly to a family in need. I know there are talks about a peace treaty but a) they may well be a Russian fakeout, and b) the devestation and displacement is not going away even if the guns stop today.
Moody and Quiet mix today. It’s grey and raining so maybe it’s appropriate, even though I am in a pretty good mood, because fake Friday. God I love fake Fridays. Anyway, all the new Sharon Van Etten is awesome I really should have gotten tickets for her show I’d really love to see her some day.
Okay! I had in my head that I didn’t need to write this tomorrow and today was Friday. And you know what? I’m going to roll with that. I am taking a break tomorrow. You only get four of these this week. God, I hope this isn’t the start of a bad habit. I hope I can just take one day off without screwing the whole thing up. Fingers crossed. Have a lovely weekend.