Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1497
Spending an ill-advised day posting too much on Bsky, we need a universal apology hand gesture. Crying over broken eggs.
Good morning my fine, feathered friends. How are you? Holding up okay in this horror show? I do hope so. It is wednesday, I am (mostly) emotionally stable. Haven’t been sleeping super well but seem to be decently well-rested, paradox there, but I’m not gonna question the sleep gods.
Thank you everyone who wrote in commenting and thanking me for yesterday’s words about depression. This is why we do it, people. That was very nice I am glad we could all make each other feel a bit better. Brings a tear to this old nerd’s eye, it truly does. You guys are a great community. I promise I will not try and leave you for social media fame. I am deeply thankful for my ever-decreasing follower counts. 50,000 on Tumblr, 10,000 on Twitter, 1,000 on Threads, and now 600 on Bluesky. Just about perfect.
Just back from dropping Jane off at school. The year is nearly over and I never developed any car-line adversaries like I had last year, like Aggro Van and G Wagon Lady. You guys remember them? Miss them? Guess they both had sixth graders. I tried to get a beef going with Suburban lady but turned out there were two identical black Suburbans so, you know. Couldn’t keep em straight.
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Went to get groceries after dropping Jane off. Accidentally cut a guy off in the highway U-turn lane. Sorry about that. Reminded me, once again, that a non-trivial percentage of America’s road-rage incidents could be mitigated if only we were a culture that had a universal apology hand gesture. This is a giant problem that we, as a society, have utterly failed to address. Do something stupid in your car, want to immediately apologize? Your best bet is to do a wave, which can absolutely look assholish to someone who is, at that moment, disinclined to look upon you assuming positive intent. Why can we not say sorry in our cars? It is crazy.
Actually is there any society that has a universal apology hand gesture? Can we cop it?
Or does this say something about humanity.
Just nearing the close on my 16-volume Tolkien journey and he is tepidly working on a sequel to Lord of the Rings. And he’s like “I dunno, man, basically humans lose their minds after a hundred years of peace and they start playing Orcs as kids and fetishizing the bad guys and losing their vigilance and taking everything for granted, so it is a huge bummer to write a sequel.”
Yeah, buddy. I hear you.
And then when I got home I accidentally dropped my posh organic eggs on the floor and broke five of them. This is, needless to say, a major financial setback in this day and age. I am saving three that were cracked-but-not-opened for tomorrow’s breakfast. That should be safe, right?
We dipped our toes into writing on Buesky yesterday, sorta the way I used to write on Twitter back before the toxicity of the internet seeped through everything. It… well, it definitely made me realize what a great strategy I have here with GMHHAY: write anything you think about, just post a link. Trolls and bots can’t be bothered to dig into a link. You are relatively protected from viral amplification, willful misinterpretation by strangers, and bots. But yesterday, I dunno, I just though “eh, fuck it.”
I present them to you here because… I dunno. They deserve posterity (they don’t). I am short on topics (I am not). I thought they were pretty good (meh).
First my old friend Camille and I talked about the idea of advertising to AIs, which is horrific and yet compelling, so much so I sort of dreamed about it last night. (Also I dreamt that the famed Boston goth club Man Ray had apartments above it you could lease and Emma and I got one and it was awesome but that is not relevant here):
That one yielded no new followers, human or bots, and actually had a few decent, human, kinda funny replies, so I will score that one as a win.
Then we did this one, which honestly I thought would get more engagement because people love to bash on UIs. Maybe I’m the only one who has this problem, aside from the single like I got from an old VC friend of mine who also has a stellar vintage Apple collection but that is not relevant here:
Then I posted this one that I thought was a really brilliant zinger but I suppose a deep cut unless you’ve been subjected to the cult of Bezos.
No bots, one comment from an old friend who used to work at Amazon. Low engagement. Deserved better, but I can accept it.
Then I really went whole hog with this one, which got plenty of engagement, really, since if there’s one thing Bluesky loves more than bashing on crypto, it’s bashing on AI. These are my people.
That got me a few bot followers. Like four.
Than this one, insightful Star Wars nerd commentary, zero engagement, I am sad about that. I even added the second tweet to clarify things for the casuals. But, I mean, come on. Playing Solo against the directorial drama of the Justice League, striking a blow for the friendly Star Wars nerds instead of the toxic ones, sticking up for the creators of the amazing Lego Movie, insightfully commenting on the ultimate yawn-fest that the Howard cut became, and how it ended up the lowest box office Star Wars film ever, you know that Lord and Miller woulda beaten that box office. So good. Deserved a better life, this Skeet.
My skeeting mojo was restored, however, but this 100% true, not-ironic-at-all, absolutely-what-they-should-do Skeet about Apple:
Look, the pundits are right. AI plays exactly wrong to Apple’s hands. Their privacy initiatives — the best thing about Apple these days, really, despite being flawed — are severely handicapping their AI initiatives. AI and Apple are oil and water. They should embrace it. They should have embraced it all along, but it’s not too late to turn lemons into lemonade, kinda like Naomi Wolf going MAGA after making a fool of herself to the libs (man if you have not read Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger it is not too late. What a masterpiece). Just do it, Apple.
Got two bot followers from that one. And, I think, one or two real ones.
Drunk with that high, I went to the well one more time:
Probably too deep of a cut, you gotta know a lot about Bay Area democratic tech funding, Youtube essay culture, etc. etc. But it was a good one and I stand by it.
So, you know. Not the worst. A lot of bot followers. No trolls.
Last week, I ill-advisedly commented on a Chris Hayes post and, for, like a solid week I acquired like two dozen bot followers, arguing bots, insane comments. Just utterly unpleasant.
The takeaway, I think, is that things aren’t too toxic, provided you a) stay out of the timelines of the famous people, b) don’t use keywords that the Russians are scanning for, c) keep your jokes obscure enough that the AIs can’t get them.
But I do not think I will be doing it again any time soon. It absolutely boggles the mind that people do this every day. People I follow, people I supposedly respect, just spending all day posting ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred tweets and replies. Even when they’re someone you respect their opinions, it is an absolutely insane way to live and these people are all probably permanently pickled from it.
We are listening to someone called Alessandro Cortini, album is Memorie I. It is way high up in my “To Investigate” queue, added April 11, 2025. It is past where I am in the queue, I should have listened to it already, this should be a second listen, but my media log tells me it is not. It is so good. Noisy ambient. Reminds me of that old Ambient IV: Isolationism comp from the 90’s god that thing was so good. Zoviet France or Techno Animal or Main or O Rang I lived for that shit. I don’t know anything about this Alessandro Cortini fellow, but I am his new biggest fan. Unless he’s a Nazi or something.
Oh. Ha. He used to be in Nine Inch Nails, apparently. Well, then. Second day in a row I am discovering an artist whom I have already seen live in another band. Also apparently as part of NIN he was the first Italian ever inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That is hilarious.
Hrm don’t have any playlists done today, so I guess we’ll just share with you this full live Underworld concert at Sydney Opera House. Did anyone go to the Underworld show in Brooklyn last week? God it has been so long since I’ve seen them and even longer since I’ve seen them indoors and man now suddenly I want to see them again so bad. Alas.
Also, shout-out again to the Sydney Opera House youtube, so good. Check out the Sharon Van Etten and Caroline Polacheck shows, both so good.
Righty-o then, you have a lovely day. Keep the faith.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.