Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1456
Just some kinda depressed ramblings, today.
Oh my god I am so tired I don’t want to write this today. I want sleep. 6:21 AM is torture someone call the Geneva Convention tell ‘em to put that document in Track Changes mode.
There’s a new Contrapoints did you guys know that? Contrapoints, the Youtuber who posts a 2-3-hour-long video, oh, once a year or so god can you imagine that work product cadence? But I mean I guess that’s what Beyonce and Cronenberg do. Artists get time. No kids, no day job, man sign me the fuck up. Except I love my kid. And I even kinda like my day job. I am rambling.
Anyway, she makes a few great points: conspiracy theories are the socialism for the uneducated. I liked that a lot. And the whole concept of “Mediamancy.” That was really good.
Also there is a really good dig on Curiosity Stream that made me lol.
But really the best part was the end: people are just scared their lives don’t have any meaning. They’re scared there are no answers. So they turn to conspiracy theories. Living a life, trying to find happiness, while accepting you are not special, that your life will not be special, that there are no answers, that no one knows anything. Real challenge, that. But everything else is kinda made up. Etc. Etc.
The trick, of course, is to obsess over grocery store stocks, gardening and butter dishes. Noble pedestrian domesticity as an antidote to fascism, yo.
(She also had an amazing commentary on late-period George Carlin and I didn’t realize how fatalistic and sad that guy got at the end).
That was three hours of my life yesterday and I spent most of the rest of the day on work calls so I mean come on let’s be fair how much could I really possibly have to report today.
(I also watched Severance and did a pool meeting. I am selling myself short here but that’s kind of my schtick.)
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Was thinking about Elon and Trump and how intellectually lazy they all are. That the second they are confronted with a problem, the solution is an us and them, that there is an “other” that there should be two separate sets of laws for different groups of people. How utterly intellectually bankrupt that is and how many people continually fall for it. Contrapoints really nailed this. Marxism has an “us” and “them” based on an actual, physical, real difference: the posession of capital. Conspiracism and fascism have made-up Us and Thems, based on shifting targets, a relentless focus on the most effective “them,” no matter whether or not it was part of the Us even yesterday.
The saddest part was she is totally right about the optimistic endgame here: the fascism peters out and they all claim they weren’t part of it, and that someone else did it, made them do it, there was some other reason besides their own horrible behaviors. She very rightly drew a parallel with the Iraq war. How now we all blame Bush and Powell and the fake intel, except the fake intel was obvious and we all really fucking wanted to invade Iraq and now we all pretend we didn’t.
(My personal position at the time was sort-of right and sort of wrong, I said you could make a morally defensible, proto-EA argument that the spread of democracy and the lives that would be saved would theoretically be worth the price of invasion, but that (and here I was light years ahead of the EA movement even before they got their butts in gear) the odds were good that we were utterly incapable of pulling that off and that reality had a way of interfering with grand plans and the bigger the grand plan the bigger the potential for fuck-up. I did sort-of advocate that the US spend more time spreading democracy, and sort-of think maybe invading Iraq was morally okay, though also pointed out it was very fucking convenient we were even having this debate about an oil-rich country and if we really meant it, we should probably put our money where our mouth is and invade China or North Korea instead or something but I guess we’ll take it. What can I say I was a fucking know-it-all tech-addled bro seduced by the grand game geopolitical bullshit before it was cool).
What are we listening to this morning. We’re listening to a single by a woman named Orla Gartland. I don’t know anything about her. I don’t know why it’s in my queue. It is very pretty. If I heard it and didn’t know who it was I would guess it was that Dodie English Youtuber lady, or maybe Mxmtoon. It asks the universal question: “Why am I like this?” Good question, man.
We’re still working our way through the second listens of the “To investigate” queue. There is 49 hours left in it. It is slow going. I keep adding more. So much music out there.
This morning in the car a band called I Like Trains came on, great tune, dude has a spoken-sing voice that English Post Rock singers just fuckin love these days (Idles, Fontaines DC, Black Country New Road, Weather Station I could go on) but it has a fantastic big rock ending. But Jane was like “why would anyone like trains” and I kinda felt like I failed as a parent. Trains are awesome, Jane. Man. I might need to make her take Amtrak all the way to Boston for one of these trips. Except then we’d never get her to sit still in the car again.
Next Alaska trip booked, April 13-18, is that enough time to empty out a 2-bedroom apartment? We will see. I am kind of dreading it, it is going to be sad. Not the trip, not seeing my sister, but the actual emptying the apartment part. But the good news is my sister has like 11 cars including her own dump truck, so at least we should have the logistics mostly sorted.
(Was thinking about that “That’s Logistics” ad for UPS, was it, like ten years ago. The swansong of the heyday of the perfect corporate jingle my god, someone made Logistics interesting.)
(One of my first real jobs was at Ernst and Young in Boston and one of our big accounts was setting up the US logistics for the launch of the Sony Vaio, so, you know, I care about logistics, maaaaan.)
Uh oh the ramble hit a wall and that’s not good because we had no topics in our little scratch pad note pad. Well, we have two, but they’re both too depressing, and in any case, events are passing them by:
The Paul Weiss law firm drama is so utterly disgusting, completely capitulating to Trump like that when you’re supposedly a powerful law firm is just, like, a) utterly morally reprehensible but also b) kinda the worst possible ad for your firm’s prowess in the courts? Hire us! We will fold in a hot second and commit outright bribery! Disgusting. Of course this will happen more and more because we have learned that most people aren’t interesting in burning their lives down to fight fascism, which of course we knew already and there but for the grace of god go any of us, but also come the fuck on man.
Relatedly, I am sort of toying with the idea of going to DC for the April 5 protest? I mean. Pros and cons. Pros: it is obviously necessary that a giant, millions-of-people protest happen in DC sometime soon. Cons: I strongly suspect this one will not be it: it feels like it does not have enough time for it to gestate properly. It feels like the NPC normies (reclaim the perjoratives of the enemy and redirect them, yo) haven’t fully grasped the extent of the rot yet. But also I feel like we’re running out of time to actually even gather on the Mall, since soon enough from now, if not already, Trump will just send the military in and disburse any protest I mean does anyone have a shred of doubt this is the path he is on? So, maybe do it while we can? But also maybe it’s too late and I don’t really want to get shot but also be a real human dude.
Anyway I booked a hotel. Right by the beltway on the way home for a quick getaway when they try and round us all up.
But I still gotta convince my wife.
You should come. You know, if we do. Or I guess rather, if you are going, let me know, it may sway us.
OK well, I am depressed. I’m gonna go do pool billing and adtech SOC audit bullshit, I am sorry auditor but that evidence of that employee’s acceptance of security training absolutely does have the date on it, and you job is not to be a date Nazi, it is not my job to provide evidence to you in a date format you like, I am paying you and your job is to make sure we do the thing not format it the way you like. Shit we can’t use Nazi in metaphors anymore can we I bet that Soup Nazi episode is so triggering now I wonder what word we can use instead. Take it down a notch and be the Gestapo or Secret Police or something.
I am so tired.
Calgon take me away.
Here is a (bad) photo of Jane’s nose in profile because it is so cute she still has that cute little kid nose it is going to keep growing like all our noses keep growing and she won’t always have this cute-ass profile and I will still love her and she will still be adorable but I mean this is just the cutest damn nose.
Today’s playlist is a compilation of the clearout gems: the songs that were great and stayed at the top of the “To Investigate” playlist for months because it was a little treat to listen to them all when I started each day’s playlist “work.” Some of them have probably been on other playlists but this is a special rarity people I have only done this one before.
I am so excited about new Calla I can’t even tell you.
Stay sleepy out there.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.