Hello hello hello good morning. Oh my god, I am so tired, and so excited to be back, at the same time. SO bursting with things to talk about that I am twitching. And having trouble typing. And I have this stupid scar tape on my right middle finger still (it is working!) and its fucking up my typing.

Oh shit it’s Chinese New Year wait is that today? Flood told me I was supposed to open the window to let the new year in. I could use a new year, a February Mulligan. Yes it’s today. FIRE HORSE. Love it. On it. Ride that Fire Horse.

It’s weird that SSL and SSL are both technical acronyms and yet they do not share a single word: Secure Socket Layer and Solid State Logic. Sorry just had to get that out. Graphomania in extreme distress. It was going to fester in my brain until I put it to paperscreen. Kinda like that toe last night that kept me awake until I just kept a hand on it for a few minutes.

UPDATE: As I predicted/worried, the news that Amazon cancelled its partnership with Flock was mostly PR window dressing, and Ring cameras still suck, and they have kept their partnership with another AI Camera Company that shares their photos with the government: Axon. Also they didn’t even admit they were putting out the press release because of the massive negative blowback to their garbage Super Bowl spots. They just said it was due to technical implementation challenges. So that PR blast 99% worked on me even as I was cynical about it. Probably worked on lots of people. Don’t let ‘em off the hook, they still suck.

Relatedly, someone in the town down the road from me is on the warpath about the town signing up for Flock, and they have gone all out, and I am so, so impressed with this local activism. They are putting up signs all around town telling people that the town is surveilling them, and they have made a really super nice website, excellently laying out why Flock partnerships are a terrible idea for towns, and where all the cameras are in town. So if you are wondering why people are butthurt and bent out of shape about Flock (and Axon!) this site is a great place to start: PittsboroCameras.org.

Really just a stellar piece of local activism and man, I am jealous and impressed.

Speaking of which, I assume by now you’ve all heard of Haven Watch, the org in Minnesota that assists people who are released by ICE and just dumped on the side of the road without their phones (stolen from them), a ride, cash, anything. Jesus ICE sucks. Anyway, you should donate to them.

Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!

We are listening this morning to For Those I Love, my favorite heart-on-your-shoulder Irish rap meets electronica meets synthpop catharsis rock. I am obsessed. Two albums so far. I talk about them way too much I can’t help it. They might be my favorite band of the last decade. You will almost certainly hate them. Everyone else seems to.

Other music talk:

Listened to the following artists in the car this morning with Jane: Bill Nelson: Almost skipped, thought it was gonna be “boring ambient,” but was one of his synth bangers. Chandeen, Jane was unimpressed. Christian Death, skipped because of the swearing. Julien Baker/Torres: Made me realize how much I love the slide guitar my god I love the slide guitar so much I am a sucker for slide guitar. I think I love the slide guitar because of Neil Halstead for Slowdive which is a weird thing if you think about it. Rosanne Cash/Bruce Springsteen: Did I tell you I love the slide guitar? Sheila Divine, “I Know there is Happiness,” gorgeous, almost made me cry. Low, “Venus,” an old live standby of theirs, haven’t heard it in ages, almost made me cry. Ingrid De Souza, forgot about her, that was a gorgeous song, great noise guitar in the background, PJ Harvey, “Hook,” I am still singing the words to this song I made up in my head in 1992 I wonder how accurate they are I should go look them up. Taylor Swift, “August,” this might actually be the best Taylor Swift song oh god I’m going to cry again, This Mortal Coil, “With Tomorrow,” oh shit now I am crying.

MORNING.

This may become a recurring GMHHAY segment. I am going to make you a Mix tape of this for today. This may become a recurring segment. I just said that.

Man this is a good mix. My whole complicated system of 10,000 of the greatest songs ever in a single playlist on shuffle really does deliver up some gems.

Anyway. WEEKEND CHORES. Three days in the attic studio, 10ish AM to 4 ish, just heavenly, my god, it was the best. Got a ton done. Would you know it? Could you tell? I mean, no. It is more layers upon layers on a floor, 7 layers, 2,500 square feet, seventeen thousand square feet of floor layering, I have been doing it for maybe a year it will take maybe another year. But I love it so much. I ignore my phone, ignore the internet, listen to my 10,000-song magic playlist, feel emotions all by myself, cry and laugh and sing and groan, so much groaning. I am like one of those YouTube home improvement girls like Hannah Lee Duggan, except I dance less and moan more. It keeps me fit, I burn so many calories. On Saturday I hauled sixteen hundred pounds up the stars, more than 40 individual trips up the stairs. I would do five trips, be out of breath, set a timer for five minutes, watch my heart rate slowly descend from like 162 back down to 100ish, and then I would do it again. I did this cycle like eight times.

Friday I did other things what did I do Friday? Oh right I caught up on work after my lost-weekend-during-the-week in New York. Payed pool contractors, billed pool customers, wrote some day-job emails to my board and whatnot. Less satisfying but important, and I wanted to get it all out of my brain before the rest of the weekend.

Did a fair amount of doomscrolling this weekend and I gotta tell you, man. More and more it is harder to tell the real news from the fake news on the internet. Especially when you want it to be true. Three things I saw on the internet this weekend that may or may not be true. I can find no confirmation either way, which probably means they are not true, even though I really want them to be, which also, of course, means they are probably not true:

• A single spam-looking English-language African newspaper claims Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater, has been kidnapped by Congolese rebels and boy do I want this to be true. It’s been eight days now since they published an article, no confirmation or redaction or denial. But also Erik Prince apparently tweets a lot and hasn’t in eight days. Man I want this to be true but it is, alas, probably not. BUT YOU NEVER KNOW.

• Saw some statistical analysis of the Epstein Files showing that based on the DOJ catalog numbers there is a two year gap where the DOJ has not shared all of the files, and this gap would coincide with Trump’s first (winning) campaign. Seems weird, if you think about it, that we see no commentary from JE about Trump actually running. It’s all after he won. Man I want this to be true (so that they can, eventually, come out) but it is, alas, probably not. BUT YOU NEVER KNOW.

• Saw, on Bluesky, a screenshot from X where fugitive creepy internet Edgelord mogul Kim Dotcom claims that Palantir has tapped the phones of all world leaders and is blackmailing them. I did not even bother to go to X and see if the screenshot was real. What am I gonna do about it. But man I want this to be true (so that they can, eventually, come out) but it is, alas, probably not. BUT YOU NEVER KNOW.

I spend too much time on the internet. Even on weekends.

OH speaking of which, I added this labeler to my Bluesky that tells me if a person who’s Tweetskeet I am reading is a frequent poster and… my god, all these people they post 50, 100 times a day it is fucking insane. People are insane. The internet is breaking their brains, causing them to post constantly, and breaking our brains by consuming this shit. It really has to end.

Jane has been… up and down, lotta complaining lotta tantrums but some great times. School is putting her in a few counseling programs, along with a bunch of her friends, around conflict resolution, so I’m just going to hope they do my parenting for me. Some days I am great at it, some days it is just too much. She was borderline catatonic this morning because she had to go to school without her purse-full-of-kitties, the same one I had to bring to her at school last week. She can’t live without this thing but she loses it constantly. She’s regressed on her hitting us, which is not great.

BUT this weekend, she, once again, decided to get an unpleasant thing over with early so she did not have to do it later. She knew academically it was the thing do to, but the struggle to do it was visible. It was real. Visceral. BUT she overcame it and did the thing early. I was very proud. Shit, plenty of adults can’t do that, I doubt I could do it into my twenties.

We’ve been inviting a lot of her friends over for play dates and the vast, infinite varieties of play styles is fascinating. Some friends — good, fast friends — she fights with every time they play. Some they just quietly draw. Some they play like perfect kids together.

She is a chameleon. She contains multitudes. I love her so much.

Morning drive mix! Man, this is a great idea. Although, only 45 minutes, and that’s with wait time before dropoff, and my side excursion to the grocery store. So a little shorter than the 60 minutes I normally like to do.

Man I am so happy to be back let’s never be apart that long, okay GMHHAY? Okay.