Good morning. Hello. How are you? #756
Feeling sick, Apple's Meta murder, Jane's birthday, people writing long crypto essays, texting stress, country flashcards progress
Good morning! How are you? I hope you are feeling better than me, I feel sick for a second day. Achey. Run down. I am blaming that single tiny wine I had two days ago. I was useless yesterday, it really was a mess. And I still feel pretty awful. Took a covid test, negative, but I suppose I should keep taking them. Emma was telling me that the most common early sympoms of covid in people with our booster level is aches, runny nose, congestion, pain and I’m like yeah, that sounds like every day living. Fantastic. I had a dream I took a covid test and it had a proud, solid, very rapidly developed line on it. As covid as covid could be. I may have some anxiety.
And Jeeesus, Facebook — er, sorry, Meta — stock. Down about 30% overnight. That is hard core. It is hard to understand how thoroughly Apple is killing Meta. Just a complete bloodbath. Of a supposedly untoppleable monopoly by a supposedly benevolent company. Really something. Not content with the damage Apple’s done, they passed a new monopolistic rule with zero oversight or any recourse by anyone this week. Now they are coming for ad dollars. Not all of them, so far, just taking a 30% cut of any ad revenue for ads that are bought to boost social media posts. They had previously said they wouldn’t take ad revenue but lol nope! We must have everything! This rule, like the others, will be allowed to stand because people like Apple and don’t like Facebook but c’mon man. I have long thought it was unsustainable that Apple stayed content with app store purchase revenue when there was this other giant economy running on their devices, and they’d come for advertising eventually. And they are! But I didn’t see this one coming. Really does make you think they have it out specifically for Facebook.
And I suppose Twitter will just be a victim to this one. Be interesting to see if their kind, level-headed new owner is okay with this.
Glad you guys saw Annie the tyrant pretty much the way I did. A fellow Ops veteran Scott pointed out to me that I actualy had a third method of getting this information, by looking at the employee’s last pay stub of the year. Not sure I still have access to the 2020 ones, but he’s right, all pay stubs have YTD on them. I shoulda thought of that. But, then, of course, she probably already has these, and maybe could have just requested those if she hand’t. And, you know, been polite either way.
Today is Jane’s birthday. Which reminds me I have to write her monthly birthday letter today. Wow. Five years. I have been a father for five years. That’s hard to believe. All that shit they say about time flying really is true.
She and I baked her cake yesterday, which I then proceeded to burn, and she proceeded to scream holy murder, and I had to hand her to Emma so I could go to the store and get more supplies to make the cake again, which I then nailed, and it looked so good, and I then cracked that one while sliding it onto its plate. But, you know, covered the crack in ganache just like they do on Bake Off.
(Speaking of, this interview with Prue is both interesting and depressing).
Jane’s “party” is on Saturday but she has been very excited about her birthday today. I hope it lives up to the expectation. We have presents and cake for her today. And she is staying at Grammy’s tonight. Should be a good time. Sounds a swell day to me.
She was so good at bedtime last night. I told her I was sick and she made efforts to take care of me! Not, like, consistent ones, but the impulse was there. She gave me hugs and crafted me a paper kitty and made me some pasty in her tiny play kitchen. She mostly entertained herself.
Oh and she made me this adorable Lego heart:
We watched some Cardboard World on YouTube because I was wrapped up in reading Matt Levine’s 40,000 word entire-issue Business Week overview of Crypto, which was pretty good. I mean, it was very good. A solid, comprehensible, and comprehensive overview. I learned a couple things. Nonces! It was not as funny as Matt’s perfect, fantastic, daily column.
And I suppose if you’re dying to read long, detailed, insightful essays about crypto, there is also this fantastic essay about NFT culture and community by the former Fallon producer Gavin Purcell, who has spent a couple years going deep into crypto and NFTs under the alias Fonky Donk, which is kind of hilarious. I knew socially, peripherally, both Gavin and Fonky Donk, separately, and never the twin did meet until the publishing of this essay.
If there’s a recurring theme of these two post-crash crypto essays it’s that crypto is doing mostly fine. The bloom is off the rose, so to speak, people have taken a lot of losses, but there are a lot of true belivers and tinkerers that took their licks and moved on and kept building. Matt perhaps painted them a bit too generously when he sort of implied that most of them were responsible and just playing with their spare cash. I get the sense there were a lot of people who lost their shirts in the crypto crash, but the general gist that a lot of people survived enough to keep on tinkering is, I think, broadly right. Of all the people I know in that world, I can’t think of one that said “fuck it, I’m out” during the crash.
Matt also makes the very good point that the crypto crash was nothing like the 2008 crash: the crypto community is decently independent from, and carved out of the larger financial community. Say what you want about it, but it doesn’t carry the same systemic, “too big to fail” risk that, say, a banking or real estate crash has. We all got that right, at least.
I have been texting with an old friend, someone I missed very much and someone who, I dont think, reads or knows about this daily email. It’s fascinating in a few ways. First, of course, is that the times this has happened since the pandemic, when they ask how I am, I always want to sort of point out GMHHAY and say “this is how I’ve been, I have chronicled every day of the pandemic in meticulous detail but how are YOU?” But of course that seems totally self-absorbed, so then I just often don’t tell them about it at all.
Something similar happened a year or so ago with one of my best friends, a thirty-year friend who isn’t flaky, exactly, but, shall we say, disappears for a year at a time here and there. We are close enough I felt comfortable telling her about GMHHAY and even just signed her up for it. And then for, like, a year, she made not a single comment about it. To the point I wasn’t even sure she was getting it. Then just a few weeks ago she made a comment that made it very clear she was getting it the whole time and even reading it, then I felt… dumb? I don’t know. Like braggy or something, as if neurotically chronicling every day of your life to friends and strangers is something to brag about rather than, you know, see a shrink.
So I think that whole thing scarred me a bit, so here I am, once again, reconnecting with an old friend and I am totally not mentioning GMHHAY at all this time, which is kind of hilarious.
But more than that, the whole experience is stressful! Like I miss this person I have missed this person for a long time! They have historically not been great about staying in touch but they are now, and every text is stressful! I feel like I am bad at texting. I’m not bad at small talk, and I’m not bad at real talk, but I’m bad at succinct talk. And it is inappropriate to write entire essays in text messages. And this person is busy with a very difficult job and parenting more than one kid (insanity). You can’t overwhelm them. It’s hard! It’s hard!
As I am writing this, though, I realize I was in this same situation with this friend like four, five years ago. And they are still my friend, and they are back, and maybe I shouldn’t stress so much about it and just do friend things and enjoy the friendship while it’s here.
But I do, for a second day in a row, wonder if this happens to anyone else.
I am still doing my country flashcards every morning. Every morning after I finish these words, I do my quicken transactions, check my server and do any light maintenance that’s needed, check my Netflix queue, Emma’s Google Photos drive for Jane photos, my Youtube channel, my finances, and then I do country flashcards for Europe, Africa, Asia, Central and South America and the Carribbean. I am getting closer to mindlessly being able to finish them all. After six months or whatever (god I should go look I bet it’s more like a year now) I don’t immesiately mess up if I let my mind drift. I’ve stopped thinking about the countries and Googling them and reading their wikipedia pages. I’m making good progress at having virtually every country in the world lodged in my brain forever.
Yet there are still challenges. Got a text from a friend the other day mentioning Costa Rica and I had to stop and think for a second where it was, which was somewhat sad given how much effort I’ve put into this. And there was a similar situation recently when I read an article mentioning Slovenia and I had to really think about it before it got stuck properly on the map. It is insane how much effort this is requiring. Anyone who belittles someone for not knowing where every country is is being unfair. This is a monumental undertaking.
They built the largest Hindu temple in North America in the town next door. It looks pretty amazing! Just opened. Yay Hundu temples.
Was gonna do a moody and quiet mix today but let’s do a mix of Jane songs for Jane’s birthday. May Jane playlist had exactly an hour of songs, after five years, so I guess it is an omen. Time to post it.
Happy birthday, Jane!
I too am bad at succinct talk. I wind up with laconic talk, which I fear pushes people away. I try ringing people while I cook or do laundry, but those who are willing to pick up an unscheduled call are few and far between these days.