Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1381
LIziqi is back, Unifi VPN offerings, Gargoyles sunglasses went out of business in 2022, TSA renewal existentialism, click inflation in UX, poetry shit
Good morning, good morning. It is raining here. First time in 30 days. Totally cool and totally normal.
Ahh fall. The time where I put on and take off my cardigan every five to ten minutes. Male menopause what, now?
Thank you for all who checked in on me during my melancholy. I admire your functionality and ability to share your positivity with others. Nicely done. I am feeling much better today. A three hour mid-day nap and some long talks with my wife helped immensely. Though the benefits of the nap were severely diminished immediately upon waking up and stupidly looking at the news and seeing some of Trump’s new nominees.
A small programming note, I totally mis-numbered yesterday’s edition of GMHHAY, it was not, in fact, 1378, but rather 1380. Weird. Anyway it has been corrected in the archives.
And based on a couple reader’s feedback that the border is annoying, and makes GMHHAY harder to read on mobile, I am trying Buttondown’s other email template, they only have two. They do support CSS, so I suspect in the end I will have to tweak the CSS to get this thing the way we like it, but, god, I haven’t touched CSS in, like, 10 years? It’s on the list, it’s on the list.
I also turned comments back on up on the web, so if you were someone who commented on the email versions of GMHHAY, that option is available to you once again.
We are listening, at the moment, to the new Bill Callahan/Smog single, “Beautiful Child.” We just finished up the new Claire Rousay album, “The Bloody Lady,” a lovely ambient excursion, instrumental and soothing. Not as emotionally harrowing as her last proper album but still quite lovely. And I don’t know if this Smog song is an advance single or something but it is quite great, bit more dramatic and harrowing than his recent more country-inspired work. Might even be a cover? With investigating.
Getting a ton of new followers on Bluesky, seems to be popping off over there. I now have, gasp, 180 followers, which is 1/10th of my Threads follower count, and that is 1/10th of my Twitter follower count, but that is just great. Fewer followers the better these days. Anyway, if you are sick of “The Man,” feel free to follow me over there, especially if you make music? Not enough musicians on Bluesky yet.
Liziqi is back, do you remember Liziqi? Chinese lady who made incredibly soothing, sort of ASMR-esque videos of her domestic life in rural China. She disappeared off the internet three years ago, leaving behind a Youtube channel with over twenty million subscribers. Details of the disappearance are hard to come by in the west, but apparently it had something to do with a legal dispute with her Youtube channel partners. Although Wikipedia has said for a year or two now that that was resolved. There were vague rumblings of some sort of dissatisfaction from the Chinese government, but, then, why? She really does promote a quite lovely image of China.
In any case, after three years of no videos, she has posted three videos in the last twenty-four hours. They are mostly the same as her old videos, no acknowledgement of the long absence, though the final video inexplicably ends with a music video so who knows. That was weird.
Anyway I am completely obsessed with her still and I am very happy she’s back. And happy to see her Grandma is alive and well. She used to post like one video a month or something, so three in a day is unprecedentedly rapid. It leads me to hope that for the entire past three years she was still making videos, and now she can post them all and we’ll get, like, one a week or something, or one a day, and man this really is fantastic news I need some Noble Pedestrian Domesticity ASMR home arts and crafts videos in these trying times.
Reader Jenna wrote in to call BS on my stated hatred of poetry, pointing out I liked her (very excellent) book, and also I like Anaïs Nin, which is very true. I hereby refine my statement to say I dislike metered poetry, and poetry is better when it is sensual and, well, poetic, instead of about, like, elves and dwarves, even though I, obviously, like reading about elves and dwarves. At any rate I am now 10% of the way done with The Lays of Beleriand and, I mean, it’s fine. I don’t know how many times I have to read the story of this idiot Turin Turambar and his rash ways, but I suppose reading some fantasy fiction where impulsive idiots get their comeuppance is perhaps therapeutic in this political climate.
My obsession over Unity Technologies Unifi networking gear continues. This is a very expensive thing to get into at this moment. But into it, I am. There’s just something very calming, very “everything in its right place” about it. A world where things just work, where design and manufacturing are reasonable. In addition to all the camera and doorbell stuff I talked about yesterday: self-hosted, non-Chinese, etc., there’s some great VPN features. Spent a good long time yesterday learning how you can use a Dream Machine Pro to get a VPN covering all the devices in your house, including weird stuff like streaming boxes and whatnot, so you don’t have to have client software on everything. You can also do selective VPN: Have a separate WiFi network for VPN stuff, have a VPN just for certain devices or, if you are a connoisseur of, you know, certain less mainstream corners of the internet like pirating or porn or crypto or whatever floats your boat, you can apply your VPN only to certain sites. My interest in this has nothing to do with the stated intentions of the new administration to ban porn, I swear.
You can also use a Dream Machine Pro to make a VPN for you, when you’re out of the house, so all of your traffic over, like, a Starbucks wifi network is secure and goes through your own connection. All very convenient.
I just wish you could run Plex on it.
The number of clicks to anything is going up on the web. Continuously. Have you noticed this? Every UX change to every site? More clicks. I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I had mostly been placing the blame on security concerns: one of the biggest offenders in this “click inflation economy” is that more and more sites are doing this annoying AF thing where you have to enter your username, hit return, then enter your password on a new screen, instead of just entering both at once. I hate this with a fiery passion, BUT, I have been generous and assumed that it was some weird security thing.
But I see more pointless clicks everywhere these days. My bank just did a redesign: more clicks. My daily writing coach, 750 Words, recently launched their redesign and now you need 1-5 extra clicks to get writing each day (disclosure I may own 5% of that thing from some deal like 20 years ago. I should probably write Buster about click inflation and ask him what’s up).
Anyway, I have a new theory about it, wanna hear it? It’s a whole new generation of UX designers! The web is so old now! We are probably on our third or fourth generation of web designers and anyway I bet they just don’t teach them this anymore! I bet “reducing the number of clicks” isn’t even on the UX designer curriculum anymore. Or part of the zeitgeist. I wonder if there is some legendary, curmudgeonly old UX designer, still esteemed, still doing the UX conference circuit, who is constantly haranguing young bucks about the number of clicks in their sites, and the attendees just laugh and say “whatever old man.”
I’m not projecting what are you talking about, you’re projecting.
The TSA emailed me and said I could renew my TSA Pre, which expires in May. This has sent me into a bit of a tailspin about what, exactly is going on here. They have specifically said if I renew now, it will just extend my current registration by a whole year, so, until May 2026. So, like… can I renew the day after I register and get two years instead of one? How far in advance, exactly, can I do this renewal.
And for that matter, why is there a renewal at all, on any of these things? Why do I have to renew my drivers license? I mean that one makes a little bit of sense, maybe eventually I’m so old I can’t drive, but it’s not like they ask any of that or do any of that when you renew, and they could just turn off your license when you turn 80 or whatever anyway, without you renewing? And in any case, it’s not like you get too old or blind to fly or go through a security lane. Why does TSE pre need renewal? Even if it’s a billing thing, just collect the money! It’s not like I have to go re-sign up for Disney+ every year, just charge my credit card again.
The government is so inefficient we really need a Department of Government Efficiency run by some clever, competent businessman hahaha oh god, I can’t, I can’t, I am sorry. What a stupid world we live in, what an absolutely stupid world. The new department of government efficiency is named after a meme coin and has… two leaders. Super efficient. Real “why don’t you go talk to some fish, Aquaman” energy to it.
I tried to link to that Superfriends skit by The State that I was alluding to there, but it is not on the internet. Our culture is being destroyed, people.
I have been thinking about Gargoyles sunglasses a lot and thinking about how you never see them anymore and I wondered what was up enough to go look online and a) the company closed down in 2022, which is shockingly later than you would think? and b) New old stock Gargoyles go for $400-500 on eBay, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Emma does not remember Gargoyles, she says she was too young. Is this true? How old is the Terminator didn’t that movie come out like ten years ago?
Met Jane’s Gifted/Talented teacher yesterday at the burger place. They don’t call it GT and Jane is not officially in it till second grade. But it was good to meet the teacher. Sitting here, paralyzed in the woods, actively avoiding the idea of “living up to my potential,” I have a somewhat conflicted view of the concept of “gifted” or even, really, intelligence, but I know that is irrational. My intelligence has served me quite well in life and even if my lifelong love of learning has been nothing but a useless hobby, it’s been a profoundly rewarding one.
Also last night Jane and I had a repeat of the night before, her being really upset it was time to go home, and that we couldn’t go to the playground (it was way past dark at this point). But she handled it without telling me I should die and was the worst daddy ever, and I handled it without sulking and telling her to stop being so mean. We got through it like professionals. She was very proud of herself, once the heat and anger burned off. Progress, progress.
Enjoy this golden hour triumphant photo from six days ago as a symbolic representation of that victory.
We have a Moody and Quiet playlist for you today. Ethel Cain growing on me more and more as the days go by. Still loving that Sky Cries Mary album. This Tom Waits song has Keith Richards on it so I gave it a re-listen and man, I forgot about that gem. Don’t know much about this Sheherazaad band/artist yet but saw them on KEXP and loved it. I am sorry about the Rolling Stones.
Until tomorrow, fair friend. If all goes well I will regale you with tales untold of Walmart on a Friday morning. It should be revelatory.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.
I've been noticing the same thing about number of clicks. Each new version of the One Finance app seems to make common tasks like moving money between accounts more obscure and usually requiring more clicks.
But it's not a lost art. I know at the company I work for (medical software), we track KPIs that give us stats on how many clicks are required to perform common operations and reducing that load on providers is always a goal.