Good morning, friend. Hello. Greetings from the gold medalist in the fantasy “Writing without an editor or topic” Olympics. Man I love writing without an editor or topic. I am so good at it. So great to be so good as a useless and dying skill.

Don’t have much time today, it remains unclear whether I will send this short or send this very late, like this afternoon. I suppose the former. Suzy and those west coasters are probably already getting worried at how late I am. Sleeping late when Jane has no school is awesome, but boy does it mess up my GMHHAY cadence.

All around the world, people are doing the mysterious and important work of merging fruit. Fruit Merge has swept the GMHHAY community. Many members have posted scores that far surpass my 4,770. One member posted over 5,000. Superhuman fruit mergers. Lumos corporation has their eye on you.

Here is my prediction for the Middle East: this is the new status quo. This is the new normal. Iran now has a toll on the strait, and they are going to make lots of money and use that money to make a new nuclear program and we are going to put up with it. The end. We lost. We made it worse. Iran will turn into a North Korea, and Israel will have to leave them alone.

Unless Israel nukes em against our will. Which. Yeah. Wouldn’t put it past them.

Recall my 2026 bingo card.

Relatedly: seems like we might start running out of jet fuel in the next week or two. NBD.

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!

Not listening to any music today, listening to my CRO talk about our upcoming demand partner implementations on a group call. I am cheating. I should be paying more attention. But I gotta get this done before I leave. It is a very busy day. Cities, man. There is so much stuff you gotta do. So many friends to visit and trains to take and coffees to get. I don’t even drink coffee.

So I had been all excited about this return of Dead Can Dance, and their new Bandcamp page, and their new single. I’ve not listened to it yet, but it’s in the queue, and I had hopes and dreams of seeing them again. Except I probably wouldn’t because I’ve seen em four times which means I am not allowed to travel for them and I doubt they’re playing NC.

But I have learned two things in recent days:

1) Lisa Gerrard is no longer in the band?!?! WTF?!”?@? That is not Dead Can Dance! That is Brendan Perry solo!

2) Brendan has used AI on the cover of the new DCD single, and wrote a terrible essay purporting to explain why it is okay — because it helps people be creative. It’s the usual sadsack excuse: not because of his reasons, not because of any AI-specific thing. Well, that too. But more fundamentally, willfully poor reasoning. People complain you do X because of Y. You feel compelled to respond. You say you do X because of Z. You don’t even mention Y. Why are you even responding to the criticism if you don’t even address them? There is no point. Just stay quiet.

This makes me very sad. I am somewhat shocked how quickly forty years of goodwill evaporated. I am bummed. I mean I will get over the initial shock, put this out of my mind, and find a way to continue to enjoy old Dead Can Dance music because I cannot imagine my life without “Severence” or “American Dreaming.” But come the fuck on, maaaaan.

Relatedly: There is no ethical consumption of HBO’s Harry Potter series. I do confess I watched the new trailer. I am deeply grateful that it looks bad, so I do not have to feel FOMO while skipping this. Nor do I have to contort myself into some sort of feigned and complexified ethical position that gives myself permission to do something wrong even when I know it’s wrong, like I do when I eat a burger. One less thing to feel guilty about.

Re-watched Armageddon last night. It is as glorious and stupid as I remember. It is still completely unclear why there is a gatling gun in space. It is amazing. It is the best. It is the worst. Though it turns out that Aerosmith video with Liv Tyler is not for the Aerosmith song that it is in the Liv Tyler film. That was somewhat confusing. The 90s were very confusing. This hellpot of a script was “adapted” by Tony Gilroy and the screenplay was written by JJ Abrams. And other people. 10 other people helped them. But it is somewhat mind-bogging to me the creator of Andor was involved in this. JJ Abrams makes sense.

Jane got to spend the whole day at the Children’s Museum with one of her best friends from Chapel Hill, who is randomly and coincidentally in town because her mom is at a conference. She had a great time. She is gonna see her again today at MIT. Jane has such an active social life. But most of the time she rather sit in front of her screen.

Same, girl, same.

Chvrches are back. I am excited. Did not love the Lauren solo stuff. I mean, I love her, and I sympathize. Her band is amazing, their old band was amazing, it would be very hard to go find some collaborators who make music as awesome as the former members of Aerogramme. So I am happy to see them all back together. I hope they tour. I have never seen them.