Good morning. Hello. How are you? #817
Slaves to big toothbrush, Wired is getting good again, Wheat Thin mystery, the horror that is Ventura's system prefs, teaching Jane about swear words
Good morning! Hello! How are you? I’m good. Got a new toothbrush it is so scrubby and silky and smooth. Somehow softer and harder at the same time. You guys notice how dentists are very obsessed with soft toothbrushes these days? Kinda makes you wonder why they even make firm ones anymore. Maybe a couple people need them? For some undisclosed dental issues? Do you think anyone in the toothbrush industry has done research into sales volumes of toothbrushes ranked by firmness corrollated against the prevelence within the population of legitmate dental/medical needs for harder-bristled toothbrushes? And if someone did do that, and they were to find out, hypothetically, that we, as a society, consume way more hard-bristled toothbrushes than are medically necessary, statiatically, for the populace… well, do you think anyone would do anything about it? Do you think the toothbrush industry cares if it sells us the right number of soft, medium and hard-bristled toothbrushes? As the trends change with the dentists, do you think the toothbrush industry adapts to those trends and then tries to foist the newly trendy toothbrushes off on the population? Or do they try and push their own toothbrush trends? Or do they just follow the market’s desires? Which may or may not be driven by medical advice.
Man. I bet we’re all just slaves to Big Toothbrush.
Also the first toothbrush that Amazon recommended me when I searched for “toothbrush” was $199. Amazon has lost the plot.
You guys read Cory Doctrow’s Enshittification essay in Wired? So good, especially the intro about Amazon. Damn. What a piece.
Wired has been having so many good pieces lately, actually. And it’s paywall is really good. I am debating subscribing to Wired again after, like, 20 years of not subscribing? Kind of nuts.
Yesterday I had to go to the doctor to talk about my mildly crappy CT scan, and Tuesday is also the day the groceries get delivered. I had set all this up to work in perfect symphony, and so that I could get it all done, and do morning with Jane, without bothering Emma. But then the grocery people just decided to not do the groceries on time, just do them an hour late. So I ended up actually being at the doctor, with the doctor, while I’m texting the person from Postmates or whatever company this particular grocery chain has outsourced this vital part of their functions to. And I’m apologizing profusely, and the doctor doesn’t seem to mind. We have a good laugh about it.
So I’m sitting there discussing heart health with my doctor and the shopper says they’re out of Zevia Ginger Ale and the sends me a photo of the ginger ale section and asks what replacement I want. I explain to her that the Zevia Ginger Ale is with the Zevia in the healthy sodas section, not in the ginger ale section (a perfect example of why you should not outsource this function). No answer. But then a few minutes later I get another text from her saying they’re out of Original Wheat Thins and do I want anything from this photo:
And I swear to god, this exchange is so weird, and I’m trying to have a serious conversation with my doctor here, but I have no idea wht’s going on, and I’m going to just post the conversation here verbatim because I feel like I’m losing my mind:
Shopper: Unfortunately, I couldn't find the Wheat Thins Original Whole Grain Wheat Crackers. Is there a replacement in this photo you would like?
Me: Original family sized. Top row, $4.99 thanks!
Shopper: Ok, the app is not let me scan the family size family size. It's telling me to replace it with a tomato and basil wheat thins.
Me: Ha well scan whatever but that's the one! Thanks!
Shopper: It says it needs to be under five dollars
Me: ???
Shopper: replaced: Wheat Thins Original Whole Grain Wheat Crackers with Wheat Thins Sundried Tomato & Basil Whole Grain Wheat Crackers. Reply "Y" to approve the last item replacement, reply "A" to approve all previous order changes
What is happening here? Would you type Y or N now? Or nothing? I have no idea! Why does it need to be under five dollars? How is the one I asked for, which is clearly marked $4.99, not under five dollars? Why on earth is the app saying anything about basil and tomato?
And, most importantly, what kind of Wheat Thins do you think I got?
To make my absurdly hectic day more absurd yesterday I finally decide to upgrade to OSX Ventura because my computer has not been rendering icon previews for a week or so and I keep having to restart processes in the Activity Monitor and restarting the finder and I know I gotta go dig in and delete a plist somewhere but I don’t want to deal so instead I so stupidly decide to update the OS. It takes an hour. And it did fix my icon previews, which is nice, it has made writing GMHHAY tolerable again.
But my god, the new System Preferences is so bad. I knew it was bad. It is intolerably, majestically, ridiculously, stupidly bad. It is blood boilingly bad. And I’m not, I’m just not a guy who cares about this sort of thing. Really can’t believe it. I mean, settings on iOS apps are broken and bad, but they’ve always been that way and they’ve sort of grown and you’ve grown with them and so it feels forgivable, because small space, what else can they do? But here? They made it worse, and they made it needlessly worse. It’s insane. Insane!
Why did I do this to myself.
We’ve been teaching Jane about swear words and it’s been kind of interesting. Like I don’t think swear words are bad, and I don’t want to make them forbidden, but obviously you can’t have your five year-old going around talking about how you fucked it up. So it’s like we have to explain that some other people find them bad, but we don’t, but we like to be polite to other people when we can and so if they don’t want to hear swear words, we will not say them around them. But it’s okay to say them around us. But the thing is, it’s really hard to not say certain words in front of other people unless you’ve had a lot of practice at not saying them, so for the next year or two we are going to practice not saying them at all, so we can get good at it, and then once we get good at that maybe we can say them around the house again when no one else is around. I think she grasped all that? Anyway we also said dammit wasn’t as bad, it was just kinda a swear word and we were not going to worry about that one right now.
Also she asked me what fuck actually means and I told her it means everything which is why it’s a useful word but also why it’s not a useful word because people don’t necessarily know what you’re using it for, which is sort of true?
Feel like I mighta fudged that one a bit.
Time for everyone’s favorite playlist series, noise and metal, volume 10. What’s there to say. IYKYK. Its funny how much more I’ve gotten into this kind of music as the years go by. I’ve always been into noise, was even in a noise band, but back then I made it very distinct from metal. Ditto the whole metal-meets-shoegaze thing. But all these genres are collapsing and now I like it and I am ttally okay with that.
Fare thee well!
And this essay, too! https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/01/why-does-it-feel-like-amazon-is-making-itself-worse.html
Fwiw, I keep *almost* pulling the trigger on a Wired subscription as well, but then I keep getting distracted.
but what of your heart?! i assume the doc made you feel better about the mild shittiness of your results, telling you it's nothing to be particularly concerned about?
we need our rick around for a long time!