Good morning. Hello. How are you? #789
Jan 6 report, puting my daughter on Telegram, continuing the year-long Spotify abandonment effort man that is some serious lock-in
Wasssuppppp. Happy Thursday. Day six of quarantine. It is going swimmingly. Still negative. Keeping an eye out now for the Paxlovid Covid rebound. Making around the fam until next Wednesday or so which will be a pain but is necessary. I talked to my mom and she misunderstood that Jane wasn’t with me because I was quarantining in the basement, and then she told my uncle Jack I never made it back from New York or something, game of telephone going on, so Jack calls all concerned and I am very confused because no, I am just fine.
Hrm let’s look at the morning news. Looks like Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, CEO of Alameda and co-founder of FTX respectively, turned on SBF. Well, that checks out. It was clear from the indictment that someone had. I certainly would have. I suspect the truth of the matter is that blame should be more evenly proportioned between those three, that it wasn’t all SBF alone, but heavy wears the crown, etc., etc., and in any case, Caroline and Gary are pleading guilty, and will be sentenced, someday, once SBF is guilty. And they’ll probably get bail in between. This was the correct move for them.
Been reading the 100-page January 6th commission “introduction” or “executive summary.” Love a good 100-page introduction. It is mostly no big surprises at this point, but it’s so well done. Like, before the election even happened, Trump was telling people he was gong to call it rigged, then even as the election was rigged he called it rigged, shouted “stop the votes!” Then kept going on and on about it being rigged and how there was a coup happening, and he just… never stopped saying it even as his rioters were storming the Capitol. It really is pretty cut and dried. There’s a kind of crazy quote from Barr in there that says basically “well I had to at least indulge him and look into these various accusations of voter fraud because if I didn’t I don’t think there would have been a transfer of power at all.” Like… okay, dude. You brought this on as much as anyone, you are responsible for it. Trump’s insanity is the logical end of the fallacy of your unitary executive theory. It is exactly why the unitary executive theory is flawed. Look within, dude. We all saw this coming.
It was obviously the right thing to do to create this entire case and argument out of testimony from Republicans, and specifically those closest to him. It makes the case far more irrefutable. But it really is a long litany of assholes and idiots. “I was so shocked he did this.” No you weren’t! “I told him this was ruining his legacy.” This was always his legacy! This is who he is and was!
Gotta give grudging props to Bannon, though. He is out there constantly saying “Trump is going to steal the election, Trump is going to wage a coup.” It is kind of funny how Bannon and Michael Cohen very consistently say the same things about Trump, but one is a MAGA hero and the other is a pariah. Steve Bannon takes what Michael Cohen says and added “it’s gonna be great!” to the end of it as, like, a cover? Dues? A faustian bargain? His quotes in the report are so dead on, so horrific, so craven, cutting right to the center of Trump’s malevolence, and through all of it he has managed to not get ousted from the Maga kingdom. I mean, dude’s gotta go to jail for it maybe but still, an impressive trick.
I dunno, I don’t really know this Jack Smith guy but I am hopeful he indicts. This case is so cut and dried, there’s literally nothing missing. There are like thirty smoking guns. There is ample evidence of the accused saying “I am going to commit the crime! I want to do crimes!” Over and over. From, like, ten of the dude’s closest associates. There is video. There are is literally nothing missing. What are we as a country if he does not prosecute. Pack it all in and shut it down. I’ve been reading a lot of commentary about Trump being a direct antecedent from our Nixon leniency, and I 100% believe that. And if we are lenient again, in a generation the next sociopath will take it even further. Trump’s progress will be the floor, not the ceiling. It’s got to end. Ha I know we all know this but I am… oddly hopeful it might actually happen. And not just some indictment on tax shit or vote meddling. I mean both of those should happen too, but this. This definitely needs to happen. He needs to be indicted for sedition. It will be the one line about all this in the history books in a thousand years. It can turn this 7 year L into a W. The history books will talk about Hitler’s Putsch, and then about how America learned that lesson and used its laws barring seditionists from ever obtaining office and we will look so smart instead of so utterly stupid, like we will otherwise. Imagine coming out of this whole era and us looking smart! It’s still within our grasp!
Got another task done on my year-end task list. I’m still trying to get away from Spotify. I have made a lot of progress, but I still use it, at my desktop, for new music listens. While walking around, or while driving, etc., it’s all Apple Music now. This means once a year I need to sync two playlists, the “good new tracks” playlist in Spotify and add it to my “all the good” playlist on Apple Music. I use an app called Songshift. It is pretty good. Something’s wonky with Apple’s search API right this second, though, so out of 1,463 new songs this year, it failed to match about half of them. So I plowed through and manually matched them. They make this pretty quick for most of them — the vast majority you can confirm the match in under a second. But some of them — like Hercules & Love Affair for some reason, I assume the ampersand — you gotta manually type something into the search field. It is so tedious. But I just kept going. I am a machine. Took about an hour. But it’s done. So now the two most tedious year-end tasks are done before my vacation even starts. Yay me.
One more day in my basement quarantine. It has been mostly pleasant. Air mattress has held up surprisingly well. There have been radidcal advances in air mattress technology since my camping days in the 70’s and 80’s. Or maybe they just hold up better when it’s not 30 below. Oh yeah it’s gonna get freezing, huh? My mom yesterday was like “it’s warmed up it’s only 30 below now.” But here it’s gonna be (checks weather) ten degrees. North Carolina is not cut out for ten degrees. Even when these fools get a blizzard, it’s like 25 degrees. It’s gonna be bad. Not as bad as Texas, which I assume is going to be a giant mess again, but not great! Guess I will just stay home.
Also I would just like to say how lucky I am that for these six days in quarantine, it was not raining, so I could pee outside in comfort. Now, perfectly timed, the rain comes. Really lucked out on that one.
Emma and I set Jane up with her own Telegram account (the family uses Telegram because it is pretty much the only messaging app with native iOS, Android and MacOS clients), and she can only message Emma and me. Maybe sometime we’ll add Grammy to it. So she is just happily texting me throughout the day and it is so nice. I feel loved.
Got a moody and quiet mix for you today. Been a while. I listened to nothing but “oldies” today in my “all the good” playlist instead of relentlessly plowing through new music or purchases. It was great. There is so much great music. Music is great. I dig music. I am a golden god.
All right have a lovely Thursday let’s check in tomorrow and see where we’re at.