Good morning! Hello! How are you? All well? All well here. Greetings from Somerville, MA, the under-appreciated, yet incredibly costly urban suburb (there is a word for this I can’t remember it) of the world’s fifth most expensive city, or so a Youtube video told Jane and I this weekend. We have been here since Friday evening. It has been very eventful, let me tell you.

Reader Update: A person who helps Jewish people with tasks on the Shabbat is called a Shabbos Goy. Turns out I have a few friends who have done this role, that is awesome. Wikipedia also tells us Scorcese, Tom Jones and Elvis all held this job at one point or another as well. SHABBOS GOY. I need an AI GOY.

Thursday we hosted the first Girl Scouts meeting at Chore House, and it was a big success. Aside from Jane throwing a giant fit and telling Emma no one wanted her there and she was a terrible mom in front of all the other Girl Scouts and parents. Emma worked so hard to child-proof and prepare Chore House. She did a great job. All went well. I wish I could show you these pictures of these kids at Chore House because it is so fucking cute, and my secret dream of being like Professor Xavier has no progressed another step. Someone hand me a robotic wheelchair and a bald cap.

The drive was great, I am in awe that Jane could spend 13 hours straight on her iPad and not get bored. Occasionally people tell me that they let their kids self-regulate their screen time, find their own limits. I want to do this, but, um, thirteen hours straight? My god, my god. One of our quickest, easiest trips up yet, no major traffic, no storms, no eclipses. Quite nice, aside from a ten-minute long detour I accidentally made us take while trying to get onto our bridge of choice, the Neu Tappan Zee.

I spent most of the drive playing Fruit Merge, which Emma has coached me into playing in a more zen-like manner and not getting so upset. She said to channel Severence. We are not playing a game, we are doing mysterious and important work while we play Fruit Merge. It worked. We have a new high score. Not up to Emma’s yet, but getting closer.

Ugh hold please, my new (ish) work laptop still has that gawd-awful Apple phrase auto-completion nonsense on it is just the worst. There that is better.

Saturday AM we got up early and drove to Gloucester to go to our friends’ kid’s Bar Mitzvah, the actual ceremony part at the Jewish Temple. It was a good time. Remarkably like all the church services of my childhood, really. Funny how much in common Jews and Christians have, though the internet sure would tell you otherwise. Lotts off-key singing to words out of red books. Lots of call and response. Fair amount of audience participation.

The building itself was gorgeous just absolutely beautiful. I can’t recall the last time I have been in a “modernist” place of worship, definitely not for an actual service. The wood, the light. Yeah, man. Architect did a great job.

There were a bunch of friends up there I hadn’t seen in ages. “This is how adult friendships mostly work,” I told Jane afterwards. “You see them for fifteen, twenty minutes every decade or so at Bar Mitzvahs and weddings and funerals.” Was I joking? Not joking? Both!

Excellent food. Great donuts. Excellent to see Sean and Jess and Jocelyn and Ashley and Brandon, the parents, whom we do see more than once a decade.

Stopped by Mystery Train in Gloucester after the Bar Mitzvah. Used to be in Boston, well, Cambridge, used to go there all the time. Not my favorite Boston-area record store, a bit too focused on Jazz and oldies, no new section, I like a record store with new and used sections. Only bought one record, a soundtrack. I did find a super old zine by Rich Mackin, though, which really took me back. It was a specific edition he made while he and I were both dating these two girls who lived together in, uhhh, 1992? The exact edition. Bonkers. Instant nostalgia kick. Actually, so was the store itself. It smelled like the old Mystery Train. Crazy.

Gave me a hell of a dust allergy reaction, though.

Saturday I… well I think I did pretty much nothing. Slept ten and a half hours, it ruled. Took a long walk with Sean, Jussi, the dog, and my family, after Jane threw a giant tantrum about it. Spent a bunch of the time at the playground with Sean and Emma as Jane played. Took another long walk with Sean to pick up dinner. Walks in cities. Just fantastic. I am so happy for my daughter to learn about places you can live without a car. She loves it. We all vaguely thought about going out Saturday night, but no one really had the energy. I watched Youtube videos.

If you think that was a lazy day let me tell you about Sunday, where, from about 11 AM till about 9:30 PM all I did was sit around and read cozy Sherlock-Holmes type books that take place in sci fi or fantasy worlds. Oh my god I am so obsessed with this genre it is the absolute best. I am already smitten with the Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti series by Malka Older, which involves a Sherlock-Holmes-type Lady on a moon of Jupiter, but someone had suggested The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett at some point in the last year, and boy howdy, thank you. I think it was a GMHHAY reader, in the GMMHAY slack. Oh right that reminds me:

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 aren’t listening to any music this morning. I’m in the front room of the Somerville apartment, at my awesome work spot here at the workbench in the window looking out onto the street. I bought a clamp-on keyboard tray, and tried to assemble it Sunday, so I could claim to have “done something today.” I mucked it up, Emma had to come and save me I am an utter failure with flat-pack furniture. Need an entire attic remodeled? I’m your man. Need a bookshelf assembled? Fuhgeddaboudit. But assembled it is, thanks to my wife, and it is great. I love this setup now. Jane is siting over on the daybed playing her Switch. It is lovely.

Anyway, this Tainted Cup book was a good time. Sherlock Holmes-type mystery in some world that is either sci-fi or fantasy, bit hard to tell so far. Read the whole book yesterday. 400 ish pages. Loved it. Immediately bought book two, which came out last April, started that.

Reader, do you know how long it has been since I have spent a whole day reading a book? Oh my god, forever. Reader, do you remember how great it is? It is the best. Well, let’s say second best to spending the whole day in an attic building a recording studio. Which I miss. Desperately. I dream about it. But we’ll get back to it soon enough.

I needed this escapist Sherlock-Holmes-type-in-a-fantasy-or-sci-fi-world book because I had just finished Apple in China, The Capture of the World's Greatest Company by Patrick McGee, whom I keep confusing with Patrick Radden O’Keefe but nope different guy. But oh my god, this book was so good. A masterpiece. Revelatory. A book that changes your whole perception of the world. A book that answers one of those questions you had in the back of your head that you didn’t know was a question because you thought maybe you were just dumb, in this case “hey isn’t it weird that Tesla gets to sell its own cars in China without a local JV partner what is up with that how did Elon pull that off?” Or “Who is BYD and where the hell did they come from?” What the hell does this have to do with Apple? Oh god, it is all so bleak and depressing the whole modern world is fucked.

And that is where my brain was at Saturday night in bed. I suddenly found myself hating Apple with a passion, wanting to never own another Apple device. Profoundly resentful of Tim Cook for taking this one beautiful thing and turning it into the root of all economic evil on the planet. Was it on purpose? Accident? Bit of both. Tim Cook is going to be the next Jack Welch, lionized then disgraced. And that is if Tim Cook gets off lucky. That guy fucked Apple, fucked Democracy, fucked American manufacturing. This is not hyperbole this is just depressing, cold fact. And he’s old! He’s going to retire soon! It will take a generation for Apple to clean up Tim’s mess, and that’s if they’re lucky and they can pull it off at all. We are all so fucked.

You the classic rant in The Good Place about how it is impossible to ethically even buy someone a flower now or whatever? That’s Apple now. My fingers feel like they are touching poison as I use this keyboard.

Apple is so fucked, that I feel good using a Samsung phone, because they are — and I kid you not — probably 100 times more ethical to purchase and use.

Apple is so fucked that I am seriously considering going back to Spotify because investing in robotic warfare companies and bankrolling Joe Rogan are child’s play in the Pantheon of Evil compared to Apple under Tim Cook.

And look, he probably didn’t mean to get himself into this shit morass quicksand of hell, but he certainly made his bed once he was there, sold his soul to Trump and China, and made everything way fucking worse.

They are trying to dig themselves out of it, but honestly they are so fucked, so much an actual arm of China at this point, it may never happen.

The disappointment, betrayal, and complicitness I feel in the revelations this book imparted to me. I dunno, man. It is hard to talk about it without sounding like I am crazy. I am way too wrapped up in this fucking company and it is so stupid. I am such a dupe.

I know, I know, I sound crazy, all companies are bad, etc. etc. but NO. This is worse, way worse, I promise. But if you don’t believe me, read the book.

Jane’s been having a mostly marvelous time. She and Emma went to the kids-party portion of the Bar Mitzvah last night, featuring a mac-and-cheese and an ice cream bar and a Photo Booth and Jane took cute photos with he other Candy Captain.

OH I forgot to mention that: they throw candy at the kid at Bar Mitzvahs in the temple and Jane was a Candy Captain (that’s what the Rabbi called it) and she handed out candy, then got to throw some with the rest of us, then cleaned it all up in the temple and she had so much fun and loved having a role and THANK YOU ASHLEY for such a lovely idea.

She really loves this place, loves auntie Jussi, is noticeably nicer to me here (probably because I let her do a lot of screens while I’m working before Emma gets up). We have been going to the possibly Ukranian place every morning and getting our bagels and they were all happy to see us again it is great feeling like actual residents here. Walked the bike path a few times already, though it is cold and rainy. A real unfortunate part of this whole habit is we leave NC as it is getting lovely and come to Boston when it is still cold and rainy, but dem’s da breaks. I still love it here.

I don’t have any music for you today and it is 10:04 and I should probably get this out because I need to start working and Kirsten is reminding me I am 4 minutes late for our weekly one-on-one, so… BYE.