Good morning. Hello. How are you? #746
Waters wrap-up, Sexist watch bands and Google Ngram skepticism
Good morning! Hello there! How’s it going? Ooo tomorrow is 747 day that is exciting. And today is a Thursday. I like Thursdays.
Thank you for your indulgence about yesterday’s post, and thank you for the kind words those of you who wrote in to comment. Also, to answer a question I got a couple times, it is totally cool if you link to or share a GMHHAY. It’s not a secret, I am completely happy for it to be shared. I’m just crossing my fingers it never goes viral. But I suspect that it’s built-in protections should prevent that. Even if a post got shared around in indignation or something, 90% of the potentially newly outraged readers wouldn’t make it past the rambling introductions or gardening content.
Speaking of gardening content, I forgot to share here this week’s exciting new episode of the 2022 Gardening journal on YouTube, so here it is:
In case you ever wanted to watch me clear brush like George Bush.
Truth be told, right after I wrote yesterday’s post I felt bad about it. I didn’t say Waters was batshit, I said the comments were batshit, but hey, maybe Waters has already figured it out and backpedaled? I don’t think so, but, then, you know, our media is not exactly set up to let us know when people climb down from ledges. I’m not saying Waters is irredeemable. I was drawing linkage between three Pink Floyd simultaneous news items: the publishing deal, his comments, and the Animals re-release. That’s a lot of Pink Floyd news for the year 2022! That band was huge!
I also realized that that comment wasn’t so bad, if you took out the Joe Rogan part. Joe Rogan is really triggering! I mean, the comment was polite at least. But the thing is, it got perilously close to culture wars. Here’s the thing: I am not writing this at all to convince people. GMHHAY is therapy for me. It is a warm bath. I like that my audience is… 90% or so an echo chamber. I know you guys don’t agree with me about everything, and for every topic, I have some fantastic dissenters. That’s just great I am okay with that I just don’t want to argue, maaaan. I’m not bad at arguing, I just don’t like it. The words “I don’t want to have an argument” are, being a parent to a four year-old, some of the words I say more often than anything else.
“I don’t want to get into a semantic argument about it, I just want the protein.” — John Cusack, Grosse Pointe Blank.
Man, that really is one of the greatest movies of all time.
All right, let’s see, where do we want to go today. Wow, yeah, my “topics” list is really list of kind of queasy topics today: crypto, China and Biden… I dunno if we want to hit on either one of those after yesterday. Maybe let’s take a break with some good old fashioned capitalist whining.
So I finally caved and bought an Apple watch. I am not really excited about it, but I wanted to close my rings better. I stand by my prediction that the inclusion of Apple Fitness in iOS 16 is going to prove to be one of the best marketing gimmicks ever. I used to use s tep counter, had fallen out of the habit because it was cheapo freeware app filled with ads and annoying, and when Fitness came to the iPhone I was so excited and immediately started using it. But of course it wasn’t long before I realized this was less than ideal because, as much as I try and try, I am not actually tethered to my phone, and I found myself doing walks and stuff without it, and not getting credit for some exercise, and that effecting my rings, and that will not stand.
Plus my spiffing new electric truck lets you open your car door and start your car with an Apple watch, so that was too exciting to pass up.
I always hated watches, have never really been a watch wearer. One thing I hated was how sweaty your wrist got, and I swear to god the stench of sweaty wrist is still in my nostrils from the 80’s when I was young, dirty, hormonal and watch wearer. Sorry, you did not need that image, but that’s what’s kept me from buying a watch. But of course you know this but it took me forever to click that Apple watch bands are removable, so you can wash them. Ha.
Then I saw some dude comment on the Twitters something to the effect of: Kind of amazing how Apple Watch went from this nerdy thing only weirdos had to something basically everyone owns. And it’s true! I am probably the 15th adult in my neighborhood of 44 normie adults to own one.
And also I’m getting old so let’s start doing a little health monitoring I guess.
Because I am not fond of watches I am doubly not fond of big watches god I really can’t stand them. Just not a fan. They can look good on other people’s wrists, I guess, you do you, but I don’t want to go anywhere near them. So I bought the small one. I like it, it’s a not too big, not too heavy. Still don’t love a thing on my wrist but I’m getting used to it.
The thing that sucks though is that Apple has very obviously decided that the small watch (41mm) is for women and real men should wear a bigger watch. This is evidenced through the fact that there are basically no watch bands in the smaller, 41mm size, big enough for normal male adult wrists. I mean, I’m making an assumption here that I don’t have abnormally large wrists? It’s making me feel like a mutant! But if I go shop for bands in the larger, 45mm size, there are plenty of watch bands in my size. This is so crazy! Apple is basically saying “small watches for girls, big watches for boys.” WTF!
Out of the fifteen or so different band types Apple offers, maybe six aren’t offered in the 41mm size at all. And only three are available for a wrist over 180mm. Three! And one of them is $450! This really is stunning and… kinda sexist? But I guss it’s a pretty obscure form of “reverse” sexism, so, whatever. I will let it pass. Also Amazon has a buttload of cheap bands in all sizes. None of them have arrived yet so I am using this gross rubber-ish Apple “sport band” and I hate it. But hopefully by tomorrow I’ll have a decent assortment.
Anyway, I guess I like the thing okay so far. It’s got some neat things about it. I like the quick button to find my phone, lol, that is very useful for forgetful old people. I like that I don’t need to go looking for my Apple remote anymore. I like the heartbeat thing. I wish it did CO2. I VERY much like the weather easily accessible. I am happy to be a newly dedicated ring-closer. Sure, it feels culty but I need reminders to get up and keep moving.
I had been proud there was an Apple device I didn’t own, as much as I’ve lifelong loved the company, it really is absurd. I can still take pleasure in the fact that I’ve made more money off of them than they’ve made off of me, though. This is an important metric for me for all of the tech titans: to make more money off of them than they’ve made off of me. It is true for me for Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. It is not true, alas, off of Netflix, never made any money off of them, but they’re a kinda wannabe titan these days I suppose. Oh Microsoft. Don’t think I’ve ever made any money off of Microsoft? Have I? Oh wait they own Xandr/AppNexus. We’re good there. Also I’ve barely ever spent any money with Microsoft in my life. Maybe less than $1k. I’ve bought one Xbox and maybe 2 copies of Windows, ever in my life.
Still reading Narrative Economics by Robert Shiller. Almost done, I swear. I am sad to say that despite being written by a Nobel Prize-winning Economist, it is… not paritcularly good? I mean it is sort of has a dilemma at the heart of the book because I believe the premise. I suspect most people believe the premise: that narratives influence economics. But the problem is Schiller doesn’t really spend much time proving the premise? Which is weird, right?? I mean, maybe that’s not his point. He seems to be going for one of those “seven universal narratives” type things: where he’s not really empirically establishing Narrative’s influence, but rather catalogging a series of persistent, century-long economic narratives that do the influencing. Which I guess is fine, maybe it doesn’t need to be proven? I don’t know.
The one thing he does to try and prove his argument, though, is repeatedly, consistently make use of Google Ngrams and Google Trends to map the level of conversation around specific topics. Once or twice he’ll use a LexisNexus search or something, but easily 90% of the “data” in the book comes from Google charts. This is… weird? I mean, I guess it’s not uncommon but it strikes me as risky. As over-reliant on the infallability of products that come from Google.
And it’s funny because it sort-of makes sense, er, made sense, back in the old days. OG Google, Google Book Search, those first few products from Google… We believed them, didn’t we? But now? Google launches a product and, lol, yeah, okay good for you little Google it might be broken, it might be buggy, and it’s certainly not going to last. You really gotta reach back into your mind, into the old days, to remember when Google products had real rock-solid authority. Interesting, that. Google’s definitely done some brand damage. This book is only three years old, though: written after the time of Google’s perceived infallability. So, personally, I question its reliance on Google Ngrams and Google Trends. But I suppose it makes sense. Those products are grandfathered in, in the minds of a lot of people. I do wonder whether they’re that good. No real way to check, though, is there? No other product to benchmark it against.
In Sept 2003 or so, I did a Google image search for “Radiohead Hail to the Thief.” The album had been out for three months or so. Yet there were zero images returned on the Google Image Search. This was stunning to me. Luckily I had a few friends working at Google, and Google was still small then, so I asked one of them what was up. The answer was vague but effectively that Google Images just does not crawl and index the web all that often. This opened my eyes to the fallability of Google’s products very early on. I have, therefore, been inherently wary of any argument that rests itself too heavily on Google Ngrams or Google Trends.
This book, then, is really pushing my buttons.
Got a noise and metal playlist for you today. Apparently it’s been done for three days and I didn’t even notice. Everything on here is brand spankin new. Boy I regret not going to see Boris at Cat’s Cradle that was a mistake. Man this new Gilla Band record is intense. If Idles are not quite intense enough for you give Gilla Band a shot maybe. Thank you again to Bill for the Chat Pile reccomendation.
All right see you tomorrow on 747 day.