Good morning. Hello. How are you? #720
The soul of a minidoll. The end of the 4AD touring era. Stagflation and the capture of economics. Google charging for free stuff after 15 years. Andy Warhol's Dracula is out on Blu Ray.
Hello! Good morning! Wednesday already that is kinda cool. Oh hey there’s an Apple Event today, that is cool. Is “Event” capitalized in “Apple Event?” Logically, would seem like no, but I think at this point “Apple Event” is the proper noun version of an event done by Apple? It’s what they call them in the UI of the Apple TV and such. Hrm. Relatedly, Meghan informed me it’s “Aqueduct” and not “Aquaduct.” That is dumb. We should start a petition to change the spelling. I’m thinking of unlaterally doing this, as I start writing about Aqueducts all the time as I get to reading my next book, but I have a sneaking suspicion people would not realize it was intentional, I’d have to footnote every GMHHAY to explain myself. Which might be a pain. But, also, I really like footnotes, and Substack, I must admit, has phenomenal footnote integration and I really don’t use it enough. And I don’t use it enough because of dumb Facebook, where I cross-post these entries, but that is not fair to the engineers who took the time to code this glorious featuee.
What to do, what to do.
What makes a LEGO minifig a minifig? That is, wherein does the soul of a minifig lie? If you have a minifig, and it is a character, and it has a name, what part of the minifig makes it that character. Jane has a minifig doll from the LEGO Elves line named Naida1. She has an elven torso and legs and a normal-ass LEGO Doll face and pale purple hair. If Naida changes her hair, Jane swaps out the purple hair for some flaming red hair of a different minifig (in this case, a fruit-stand vendor), she’s still Naida, right? Conversely, if Jane leaves the purple hair but swaps out the torso (in this case, for the torso of a vetrinarian minifig), she’s still Naida, right? Just Naida wearing a vetrinarian outfit. I don’t think anyone would argue with either of these propsitions. But if Jane swaps out the torso and the hair, Jane is under the impression she is still Naida. Is she wrong? Prove her wrong.
Put our best philosophers on this problem.
I would like you all to know that the sting/bite on my abdomen was so hot that when I took my fancy laser thermometer to it, it was a full five degrees hotter than the rest of my non-inflamed abdomen. That is nuts! I just thought you needed to know that. For science.
Dead Can Dance have cancelled their US tour again and I am sad. Seems to be for “Health Reasons,” which is not a good thing to hear about a tour being cancelled for, especially when the tour is seven months out, which means its not COVID or something (though the European dates are much sooner). This, combined with the recent Bauhaus cancellation makes me think we might soon be nearing the end of classic 4AD bands touring. I mean, who is left? Cocteau Twins haven’t toured in years. Throwing Muses and Belly don’t really tour anymore. Breeders do. Pixies yes, but a different lineup, same with Clan of Xymox, Pale Saints. No Dead Can Dance, no Bauhaus, no Wolfgang Press, Dif Juz, Xmal Deutschland, Colourbox, Pieter Nooten. I don’t think Michael Brook or Heidi Berry tour (oh my god, can you imagine? Double bill!) Colin Newman sort of does, Birthday Party is done, Modern English! Oh Modern English still tour, there’s one. I will make a point of seeing them if they ever tour again. Last album was pretty good and I’ve only ever seen them once. Tones on Tail kind of did with Poptone, that was awesome, but I suspect it was a one-off. His Name is Alive? Maybe? Though Warren’s more likely to tour under a million other monikers than that one.
Man that paragraph was probably gibberish to, like, 90% of you. Sorry.
But wow, we really were blessed for a lot of years. It will be sad to lose that entire body of touring bands from our lives.
Lush. It’s still conceivable that Lush would do a reunion. Miki and Emma seem to get along?
Underground Lovers tour, but not to the US, and now we’re in Guernica territory. If we’re going there, Unrest is the better bet. Different story, Guernica.
Anyway.
I’m in stagflation in my history of conservatism books and it is a bummer. Basically the conservates use stagflation as an excuse to seize the initiative in “economics,” and push the completely unsupported notion of supply-side economics, the main architects of which have zero economics training. It’s mostly a PR and lobbying opp run by a famous Republican lobbyist, and it totally works, they run roughshod over the entire economics establishment of the United States, in academia and in government, and push through what essentially amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking, and virtually the entire country decides to buy in to this delusion because it will save them all a little bit of money in the short run. It’s a depressing enough situation, but one which I already knew about. What really struck me in reading this, though, was how utterly the orthodox economics “profession” failed to counter it in any way, shape or form. To be fair, they were being punched while they were down, mystified by the new phenomenon of stagflation, so their usual Keynian bag ‘o tricks wasn’t useful for them. But man, they just had… nothing. By the time I started studying economics in the late 80’s/early 90’s, they had developed a few counterpoints, at least, but even then, man, they really whiffed it. Except Jane Jacobs, but she’s the exception that proves the rule, since she’s not really an economist.
And, I mean… have they really fared much better since then? There’s some good shit going on in economics — MMT, Behavioral — but by and large the state is still almost completely captured by “lobbyist economics” and the profession itself is just so, so sad. Imagine any other “science” where only once in a century to they invent anything cool. Imagine any other science where virtually every “scientist” that advises the government is paid by lobbyists. Ha, well, I suppose that’s true to some extent of virtually all sciences at this point, but it really does feel worse with economics. I’m increasingly off of economics.
I need to flesh this whole theory out more, but I guess I’m saying here that of late my faith in economics is…. trending toward zero. Which is not fair to Stephanie Kelton. Hrm. I need to think about this more.
Google has started charging for Google Workspace, aka GSuite, aka Google Apps for Domains, their service that lets you get email on a domain name you own without having it hosted at Squarespace or something. I’ve been using Google Apps for Domains, for free, since about 2006 or so on three different domains. I suppose it is reasonable for Google to want money for this. But it sucks. I’m now spending, like, $100 a month that I didn’t use to spend, to supply email to a bunch of friends and weird email accounts that have piled up through the years. It’s relatively cheap, per email address, but I have so many weird ones, and random friends are still using these domains as their email after more than a decade. I’m gonna need to do this comprehensive survey and whittling down of unused email addresses. It will be tedious. I may never get around to it, which is precisely what Google was hoping, I imagine. I wonder how many people use this service. It was all the rage when it came out, and I don’t get the impression there is some hot new email service provider for domain names that has come out since. The legacy free service has been deprecated for years, though, and was only available to the OG users. I suspect ages ago they said something like “free forever” and are now breaking their promise, but who has time to delve into that nonsense. It’s a different era of the web. We are supposed to pay for things now. That is probably for the best, the whole Free in the Chris Andersonian sense did not especially work out. It’s arguably to blame for a good percentage chunk of the internet’s misery.
Movie HD upgrading project is going well. My Science Project, The Last Picture Show and Andy Warhol’s Blood for Dracula all showed up on Blu Ray at the house yesterday, so I am ripping and adding those now. Man I am very excited for an HD version of Blood for Dracula it really is one of the greatest films ever made. Will be up on my Plex by tomrorow, if you’ve missed this gem. I mean, an SD version is already up, but this is gonna be so, so much better.
All right, oldies mix for today. Stuff from my childhood, and two different bond themes, I am sorry. What can I say. I am still learning about old music. Very into Rotary Connection this week. And excited about the impending Richard Harris biopic. I did not realize Jarred Harris was Richard Harris’ son that seems obvious in retrospect but I didn’t put it together. Good ole Lane Price. You are missed. Who doesn’t sympathize with the plights of an agency finance guy. I certainly do.
Talk tomorrow! Have a lovely Wednesday. If you have the laser disc of the 1987 film Salvation! Have you Said Your Prayers Today, drop a line.
Technically, the term here is LEGO Minidoll, as minidolls are different from minifigs. I suspect this is because they invented them later, so their IP will be patentable for a longer period of time. The patent on the original LEGO brick has expired, but not the patents on many of the other weird LEGO pieces. New LEGO inventions are motivated, I suspect, by IP law. In any case, Jane views minifigs and minidolls as equally worthy. They are not phsyically interchangable, though, you can’t mix and match minifig and minidoll parts. Also, I did teach Jane the different names, but she loves them both just fine, this whole distinction is irrelevant to the larger metaphysical question.
Modern English have been on tour all year, and doing lots of dates this month:
https://modernenglish.me/shows