Good morning good morning good morning. Welcome to issue number one thousand six hundred and seventy-eight of the beloved daily newsletter about nothing and everything, Good Morning, Hello, How Are You? brought to you by the reluctant and reforming tech exec, Mr. Richard Webb. We are just returned from dropping Jane off at school and the grocery store. Everything went Jim Dandy. Do you capitalize Jim Dandy when using it as an adjective? We will never know.

On the way home I saw them erecting a new billboard and, reader, the billboard was being hoisted by a crane, but it was in a giant metal briefcase-looking thing the size of a billboard. Oh my god I need a giant metal billboard briefcase. I do, after all, own a billboard that, every decade or two, does need a little moving:

I just took that picture. Hot fresh studio layout action. Look at that ceiling, unmarred by Emma’s washing machine misadventures. Look at that face-down massage chair for psychic meltdowns. Vital piece of WFH equipment. Companies should pay for them.

Won that billboard in a scavenger hunt sponsored by Arista and Newbury Comics in 1997. It also came with a Spiritualized lava lamp and three bottles of chocolates inside Spiritualized-branded prescription bottles. I only have one left because a RACOON BROKE INTO MY BEDROOM and OPENED MY DRESSER DRAWER and stole the bottle and ate it WHILE I WAS SLEEPING IN THE ROOM. In… mmm… gonna say 1999 or so. Terrifying, that Raccoon.

Thanks to all the people who wrote in to volunteer to read over my outline of a proposed compensation scheme for creators who have been hoovered up by AI. Do you capitalize “hoover” when using it as a verb unassociated with vacuuming? These things are unknowable. Do I have a copuy of Garner’s Modern English Usage right next to me? Yes. Am I gonna check it? Lol.

I’m like a comedian. With callbacks.

I did find last night that Ro Khanna has a kinda fun bill proposed called the Creator Bill of Rights. The full bill, two whole pages, clearly not written to be actually passed, has seven points to it, more of guidelines really. Only one dealing with AI is point 7, which calls for: “Transparency, consent, and accountability standards related to the use of artificial intelligence and synthetic media that materially affect creators’ identities, reputations, or livelihoods.” Which is pretty cool. I guess my proposal could fulfill that desire. But I don’t see any evidence that anyone has done the tedious work of actually mapping it out.

In the 1980’s, during the ascendency of conservatism in America, Milton Friedman said something very prescient that has guided the right for a long-ass time. Something along the lines of “in times of chaos, the person with a plan is the person with power.” The right has been so good at this — witness Project 2025. AOC did her best with the Green New Deal, and it’s no surprise conservatives freaked out about it, since it showed a spark of the left actually learning tactics. Anyway that’s kinda what I’m going for here. Details. Plans. Documentation. What Elizabeth Warren shoulda done before telling people unrealized capital gains would be taxed and freaking people out about their houses.

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 Translucent Flashbacks, a box set of three 12” singles from arguably my favorite band ever, Spacemen 3. It’s a 2014 UK-only Record Store Day box set, limited edition of 300 copies. Though this is probably a lie since 399 people have it marked as “owned” on Discogs so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I did not endeavor to purchase this when it came out, since I already own first editions of the three 12” singles in it: Walkin’ With Jesus, Transparent Radiation and Take Me To The Other Side. Also it’s one of those record(s) where some sides are 45 RPM and others are 33 RPM and those drive me crazy. But I did add it to my Discogs Wantlist, and after eleven years, the first copy to be up for sale in America popped up last week, and it was reasonably priced to boot, so I finally picked it up. Since it was pretty much the only official Spacemen 3 release I did not own. It is rad.

I did not try to use the download card, to see if it works 11 years later. I will leave that for a future owner. The last owner did take the sticker, though, and left the backing. That’s just cruel.

Spacemen 3 are rad. “Revolution” still a timely banger almost 40 years later.

Suzy said she liked my comparison to meat with AI. She put forth nuclear weapons — a dumb idea we should not have done and we all know we should have done. I think that is a good one. Except it does not convey the personal, individual dilemma of nuclear weapons. We can’t opt out but they are not shoved down our throats, well, until they bomb us, and we are not forced to use them.

Meat is not quite right, my wife pointed out, because we have been eating meet for forever, and lots of people think it’s “natural.” We talked briefly about the automobile and it is a good one except we arguably did not understand the impact of pollution when we invented the automobile, at least not on a global scale (as opposed to, you know, a coal pit).

But then Emma got the perfect one: PLASTICS. AI is PLASTICS. Probably super useful, but also not really useful, we knew full well from day one that they were fucking terrible and evil and a faustian bargain and we went ahead and used them everywhere in everything hey I heard you hate plastic I went and put some plastic in your plastic, I am railing about plastic right now, banging on a keyboard with keys made of plastic, which sits on a table covered in a polyurathane coating, which is plastic, made of a particleboard core, which is sawdust bound together with plastic. I am sitting on a seat with plastic arm rests and plastic covers on the base a plastic frame and probably plastic in the fabric. I am, luckily, wearing all cotton clothes at the moment — socks, boxers, pants, shirt, sweater, but if it were summer or a chore day I would be wearing plastic. There is plastic on my wrist. There is plastic on my face. There is plastic wrapped around my finger. My chair sits on a cheap faux Persian rug that probably has plastic in the strands but definitely has plastic binding it together. The floor is ceramic, no plastic, but the grout that holds it together probably has plastic in it, the subfloor is OSB, which is plastic. The vapor barrier between that floor and the concrete is plastic. Plastic from my head to my toes, I cannot escape it, you cannot escape it.

I keep meaning to re-watch that movie Safe with Julianne Moore where she tries to escape modern life and heads to the desert but you know what? I bet her house is covered in plastic.

Plastic is everywhere. AI is becoming plastic. And we are just gonna let it happen.

Inevitable? Maybe. Useful, sure, sometimes. Toxic and planet-killing, hell yeah sign us up.

Anyway the Google alert on “Global Plastic Treaty” is a depressing but informative time. They just got a new Chairman last week! Big surprise: The US keeps killing treaty. Bet you didn’t see that coming. Though we weren’t much better in the Biden administration. Plastic love, like AI love, is multiparty. Every time you see an oil company talk about solar or wind or whatever in a positive way, they do it because it doesn’t really matter to them, because they know they have PLASTIC.

Emma nailed that one.

Theres a new book coming out about the history of plastic, apparently. I’m gonna read the heck out of that. I’ll keep you apprised, natch.

Since I am finally, almost, done with A Song of Ice and Fire. Four more chapters. Assuming I don’t go read the Dunk and Egg novellas. Which I’m not gonna do just now.

Jane and I did daddy school last night, we talked about states, we talked about my mom and dad growing up in the territory of Alaska before it was a state, we talked about Puerto Rico and Guam and the US Virgin Islands though it is occurring to me right now I forgot about American Samoa, sorry Duane The Rock Johnson. I left out Johnston Atoll, because no one lives there, well, until we set up 21st century Spandau Prison and put all the fascists in it. Sorry I keep harping on that but, you know, someone has to.

Anyway then she got out her wooden puzzle map of America and pulled all the states and picked one at random and we talked about that state. She made me list some trivia of it, we went over the capitals, and she made me list my favorite thing about it, which was pretty easy for every state except for a few in the south where I had to fall back on friends living there of being from there.

Jane’s favorite states are, in order: North Carolina, Massachusetts, Alaska, Washington. I feel good about this though it does make me realize she needs to get to California soon.

Morning drive playlist this morning, Apple Music really curated a “vibe” as the kids say. It’s so weird, some mornings it’s like “Hey here is nothing but black metal” and some mornings it does this. Shuffle is very iffy when you are dealing with 10,000-plus song playlists, I think. It routinely gives up and plays songs in order. It has served up Car Seat Headrest’s cover of Nine Inch Nails four times in the last week. Mysterious.

BUT it is still great, I do not remember anything about Pearl Charles, but that is a great tune. I never willingly listen to Autechre anymore but it fit right in. Had so skip Dream Wife because of all of the swearing but it too fit in. And I got to teach Jane about Adele this morning she had never heard of her. And my god I love that Young Fathers song too much.

As I was driving home from the grocery store listening to that Arcade Fire song, with its chorus of “I Give You Power/I Can Take it Away” it occurred to me it is now a song by their audience singing to Win: we gave you power, we have taken it away. Fair enough.

Have a lovely Wednesday. Don’t forget to buy some girl scout cookies. Time is running out!