Good morning good morning. Sorry I’m late. Turns out human alarm clocks are very unreliable. Didn’t wake me up, and thus I slept till 9:40, having gone to sleep at midnight. After reading about a magical-maybe-scifi realm where everything is made of plants, augmented with the blood of mysterious whale-like creatures, and mysterious murders keep happening.

By the way I would like to formally apologize to Ivelisse, my friend of oh, thirty-plus years, whose name I have been misspelling the entire time. Two S’s, not one. Super cool. I am a great friend. I am sorry Ivelisse. I will do better. This decade.

BIG NEWS in sitting-in-my-window action. I mean, I am very lucky to be here in Somerville on this auspicious day. They are tearing down the building across the street, the only non-residential building on the street. An old plumbing company garage. There is a giant excavator and dump truck and whatnot on the street. As I am writing this, they just stabbed the middle of the building and tore down the sign. It is VERY exciting.

You never get this kind of action sitting at my window like the Balcony Man in that Nick Cave song or the dude in Waterloo Sunset sitting at his window. Not at this window. No Terry and Julie outside of this window.

It is so late, Jane let me sleep forever. She is whining constantly now. Emma is trying to handle it but Jane is strategically focused on having this whole argument right in front of me, as I start my whole day too late and feel a vague work anxiety. It is super awesome. May need to pause a moment. Hold please.

All right they have wandered off. I took the time to look at all my morning work and neurosis dashboards. Monitoring the situation, the Polymarket nerds would call it. Work revenue pretty solid, bank balance solid. Couple more days until the big month-end checks come in, that is always fun. Our latest big client’s onboarding seems to be going a little slow, COVID receding, this measles outbreak we are having seems stalled. That is a sentence I wrote in the 21st century awesome.

All right let us continue.

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I am now listening to the Kinks. I am not really a Kinks fan except for Waterloo Sunset. I mean, I have liked most what I’ve listened to. Just not really a “power pop” kind of guy, and these guys sort of lump into that for me. But it occurs to me that Waterloo Sunset is one of the greatest songs ever, after all, so I may as well listen to the rest of the album.

Oh god all this Kinks shit is in my brain because of Moby isn’t it.

Ugh I can still hear Jane arguing with Emma in the other room. This girl needs to go back to school.

Let’s so some current events!

Tech news!

The US government has banned all new routers made in China, which means all routers. Just can’t buy them anymore. For security reasons, except you can apply for an exemption, and the application has not a single security question on it. And all the shitty, insecure routers you can buy right now? That is fine. The whole thing is straight from the China playbook, actually. Which is kind of funny, using China’s tactics on them, but also just the stupidest way to accomplish this, just ridiculous.

But, then again, current routers are allowed to keep being sold, and I am completely content with the current Unifi router offering lineup, they can just take a break for a while from making new routers, maybe it’s fine. Maybe it’s fine if all of our technology just stops right now.

Anyhow, the Verge wrote an absolutely hilarious write-up of the absurdity of the router situation. Absolute keystone capers, this shit.

Speaking of technology just stopping right now, the social media companies — especially Meta – have lost some pretty bad lawsuits the last couple days. There was one in Texas that fined them $300MM for harming minors, and one in California fining them $3MM. The Texas one sounds worse but the California one actually is since there are 2,000 other cases, consolidated into a single case, that are making the same arguments, and that case is still pending, and this jury verdict does not bode well for the larger one. $3k times 2,000, plus punitive damages and we might be getting somewhere.

(In case you are wondering why you’ve been bombarded with ads for “Instagram Teen” accounts in the year 2026, twenty-ish years too late, now you know why).

Shut it down, shut it down.

NC news roundup!

• Epic Games, maker of Fortnite and Unreal Engine, are laying off a ton of people a couple towns over in Cary. Very sad. Turns out kids aren’t using Fortnite as much anymore, they are busy plotting opposing Nazi and Socialist revolutions while looksmaxxing or something, it is a little unclear to my old-ass self. People hate Epic CEO for a lot of reasons, but I will say two things he has done that we good: I appreciate his constant harassment campaign against Apple and Google and their restrictive App Store policies, and I like that he keeps buying up undeveloped land in NC to ensure it is preserved in its native state.

• The choad who is the Republican State Senate President Pro Tempore, the architect of NC’s tea party takeover and gerrymandering crime, eleven years serving, has lost his primary and formally conceded. He lost by 23 votes to a MAGA choad, which isn't great, and that guy will probably win, which isn’t great, but still. One can feel a shred of schadenfreude. Good riddance.

• You know that wind farm that Trump is literally bribing a French power company a billion dollars to not build? In NC. Wilmington. I cannot believe this idiocy. I mean, yes I can, but. Come the fuck on.

• Those troops heading to the Middle East so we can quickly and efficiently get ourselves into our next Vietnam? Coming from North Carolina.

Do I renew Flickr? They are emailing me telling me that all my photos are gonna be taken down if I don’t renew. I almost renewed without thinking, but I got distracted with some 2FA nonsense. And then I started thinking: why am I doing this, why do I keep these photos online just so pervs can occasionally like photos of a boobs and beards party from 20 years ago and a hipster dude’s butt crack at a music festival. This is not good this is not worth it. I should probably just let it all come down, right? DO my little part for slowly dismantling the consumer web?

Jane is now next to me screaming about how mommy absolutely has to get her undies. This fit has now lasted over an hour. It is borderline intolerable. I’ll be back.

I went into her bedroom and spent about 30 minutes playing a game where all the undies were fighting for the honor of being worn. We talked about hard choices, choices where there are no perfect options, where every choice had a downside. We talked about her brain and how she didn’t have to listen to it, that just because her brain is telling her that mommy or daddy has to get her undies, she doesn’t have to listen to her brain, she doesn’t have to be trapped in that loop.

She heard it all, but none of it worked. She will remember those lessons later, though. She’s good about that, at least. But… yeah. Nada. No undies. Why were both Emma and I so adamant we would not get the undies? Once we had put that line in the sand, there was no going back. That was probably a mistake. We tried to teach her the lesson to not be lazy and do things herself and not be mean to people, but in actuality we should have been focused on a lesson on the unreasonable things the brain sometimes demands of us. But by the time we realized that, it was too late.

In the end, the undies magically jumped out of the bin into her lap. Who can say how it actually happened.

I’ve been listening to a bunch of new music enough but haven’t gotten my routine solidified enough here in Somerville to actually make playlists yet. I have listened to a bunch of good new music this week, though. Thank you friends everywhere.

Oh look. Actually it looks like there is a Justa Mix that is almost done. I mean, sure, it’s mostly because of a 20-minute song, and I still need to add two, but that’s okay. Mostly new, plus “Waterloo Sunset,” of course, and a Plushgun song because Plushgun were rad and I miss them.

Also, I am 90% sure I’m switching back to Spotify. This has been kind of a bust, and I suspect I’ll be switching back to iPhone when they put out the foldable because this Android thing is kind of a bust too and god I hate capitalism and evil companies.

11:30. Jesus. What a train wreck of a morning.

BYEEE.