Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1432
RIP David Klass. Record.Club. Letterboxd. Civ VII. Jonah Peretti's memo. An old idea for a decent social network .
Good morning. Frazzled! Overslept! Alarm didn’t go off! Only the second time of Jane’s school career I’ve overslept. By an hour! And on Jane’s “most important day of the year” because she loves Valentine’s Day and today is their school Valentine’s Day party and she had a bag full of valentines. And I specifically remember turning on my alarm last night. Plus… Didn’t wake up? Even though I’d been in bed for nine+ hours? Concerning. And Jane didn’t wake me up. I mean, eventually she cracked and came in, after forty-five minutes. What was she doing in all that time? I guess we have her trained for the weekends, which is good? We had a nice talk about how she should always come looking for me if she comes downstairs on a school day and I am not in the kitchen. And if I am not in the kitchen or sleeping, to wake up mommy.
But we made it! Doors officially close at 7:55 but they don’t, because the line is too slow and cars that arrive before 7:55 (like us, who arrived at 7:54 thank you very much) can’t get to the school building before then. So the doors seem to stay open for… seven? eight more minutes?
We made it.
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I am so tired of that pull quote. Only fifteen more days and I can stop posting on Facebook completely. Come join us in Slack. It is nice.
RIP my friend David Klass. I learned about this last night from our mutual friend, his lifelong friend Scott, who introduced us about five years ago, when Scott and I decided to help David launch an absolutely stellar, delicious Akvavit. David was a great guy, real class act. Like me, a work commuter to NYC (in his case, from Ohio) so our paths didn’t always cross, but when they did he was a pleasure to see, and he was always taking me to new, interesting places because he had that hospitality bug. One of those people who would broaden my horizons and make me go see and do new and interesting things instead of just going to Tom and Jerry’s all the time (though we spent plenty of time there). I am very sad about this. He will be missed.
Morbidly, Scott delayed getting in touch and telling me what happened, because I was at a funeral. What a world.
We are listening to Steven Van Betten this morning. Don’t know anything about him. He is mellow and melodic and pretty and chill and I like it. My friend Ian recommended some new song or album by Steven plus another guy, but it’s not on streaming, just Bandcamp. I mean, good for him, but Bandcamp has no queueing, so I can’t save things to listen to for later in an easy way. So I am listening to Steven Van betten’s last previous album, from 2023: Friends and Family. Just great. Love a moody singer songwriter and an acoustic guitar. I love that people still make music like this. It’s as if the internet never existed. Except they probably learned about it on the internet.
Played another game of Civilization VII over the last few days. Turned off Crises cuz they are dumb and I don’t like them. Wish I could turn off the settler cap it is so annoying. I just ignore it. At one point I think I was… five settlers over? Which means I have to constantly focus on happiness, which is fine. I dunno. It’s not the worst mechanic but it’s too official, maybe? The game crashed on the transition from the exploration age to the modern age, which is weird because the only other time it crashed was on the first transition from antiquity to exploration. Just once, each time. There have been three patches so far, and they are chipping away at things, but not the main UI gripes; the map is too small, everything’s impossible to read, you can’t tell anyone’s strength status, you can’t tell what you’ve built in districts, you can’t queue techs, etc. etc.
Buuuut, underneath it all there is a fun game and I had a good time and boy, if they do anything with 7 like they did with 6 with patches and DLC this is going to be a monumental game. In a year. Maybe two.
Oh and the most amazing wonderful, important thing: Civilization VII will let your Mac sleep, unlike every previous Civilization game ever. This is not hyperbole. Every time you left a Civ game running, any version, I-VI, your computer would’t go to sleep automatically. You could tell it to go to sleep, but any “sleep after 30 mins” settings you had would be ignored. But Civ VII: not only is it native for Apple Silicon, your computer can sleep!
Shit, put that right on the box.
The box, lol.
There is a new kinda-fun website called record.club, where you track the albums you have listened to. I forgot I signed up a few months ago. Liked the functionality but didn’t have a lot of friends on there. But this last weekend they opened up the beta, so now you can sign up. I’m not promising the world or anything, but it does sorta feel like 2005 internet, so it’s kinda pleasant? If you do sign up. my profile is here. It’s search could be a bit better and it doesn’t have everything — it doesn’t have this Steven van Betten album, for example. But it has a lot. Has all the releases from my old record label, for example. Though they call Freezepop’s Fanticizer Sanitizer, which is kind of hilarious.
Oh and speaking of signing up for internet products like it’s 2005, I also signed up for Letterboxd. I did it this Christmas because my friend Boushard was doing it, and so there I am. And I have one friend and maybe 5 reviews. What can I say I have not watched a lot of movies this year. And I have not, as I originally envisioned, gotten kinda high and entered a bunch of reviews of movies I watched prior to signing up. It is forward-moving only. For now. Anyway, here’s the profile.
Speaking of kinda pleasant 2005 old internet (though let’s be frank, the embers of today’s hellscape were already apparent), good ole Jonah Peretti has written a new memo and boy, is it a solid memo. Real memocraft, that guy. He is starting a new old school social network, or something. It is unfortunately named, and mayhaps not quite the antidote for the disease, but a) god bless him for trying, b) his analysis of the situation and his calling out of SNARF (Stakes/Novelty/Anger/Retention/Fear) is spot-on and c) more of this sort of endeavor please? I remain optimistic and will follow the endeavor.
I’ve had an idea for a social network for years that I think could maybe help. For… two weeks of my life I even gave it my full attention. But famous-internet-investor-Dave asked for a pitch and I gave it and he said it wouldn’t work and I got dispirited and gave up and in hindsight that was kind of dumb, except I distinctly remember thinking (this was… mmm.. gonna say… 2017) “Yeah I don’t want to work on the internet anymore anyway” which is a noble sentiment but also here it is eight years later and I am still working on the internet.
Anyway the conceit of it is that you get a network of 200-300 people, that’s it. And you don’t know them. And they are randomly assigned. And you are stuck with each other. Forever. And you do not get a do-over except in the most extreme circumstances. And you guys as a group self-govern. It sounds like the sort of thing that totally wouldn’t work except I think if you methodically challenge every reason one would think on first blush that it wouldn’t work, you’ll find either that a) the obstacles are insurmountable or b) they’re actually the point. The odds of even a single person being a lot like you are extremely low. The whole thing is an exercise in bubble-bursting. Making people get along even when they are different. Of course it wouldn’t be some nirvana but I think most people would actually value this: maybe not exclusively, but as a foil to their lives, their current internet habits. Who doesn’t want to know what people not like us are thinking.
I called it Robin, after Dunbar and birds, because birds and social networks, amirite?
Anyway I am still really into it and if you want to give me and a couple friends a few million dollars, maybe four, then let me know and I’ll give it a whirl. But I am too old and soft to do it the Silicon Feudalism way. I got kids and medical issues.
I should have a Jane anecdote to close out here. We watched Real Civil Engineer last night and she got very upset she had to go upstairs and work on her valentines when 7PM rolled around, even though she really wanted to work on her valentines. She just sort of stood there, ignoring my please. I kept saying “it’s okay if you don’t want to go upstairs but just tell me what’s going on.” BUT eventually she did talk. But she just said she didn’t know why she couldn’t go upstairs but that she didn’t want to even though she wanted to work on the valentine’s but she wasn’t going to move and she didn’t know why. That was interesting. At least she tried, I guess. Eventually I offered to carry her, and that sort-of worked but instead she decided she would walk upstairs backwards, while making sure I did not try and carry her.
Mysterious.
Moody and quiet playlist for you today, all new except the Cure, which I admit I added to round this thing out, but also… best cure song? Everything else is new except the Varnalaine song and the aforementioned WU LYF. Love the new Sharon Van Etten, new Warlocks, which I listened to yesterday, those guys still have it, man. T Bone has a new album that I enjoy. Oh yeah the new Florist, so good. Can’t wait for that album.
Okay have a good Thursday. We are off Friday at work. May or may not write tomorrow. Really depends on how Jane-watching goes. Wouldn’t hold my breath.
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Thanks for reading.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.