Good morning good morning good morning. Tuesday. The sky threatens rain but it won’t deliver, I suspect. Don’t threaten me with a good time. Man we need rain. More rain. Rain rain rain. I specifically took into account the water supply when we chose this place to live, maaaan. I mean, yes, I have a spring on my property, but I don’t want to have to use it. Come on, man. Rain.

Reader note, two days ago, in an endeavor to not get my day job’s company name sucked up into the AI void, I abbreviated the name with asterisks in a most unfortunate way. While we will not dwell on this oversight, we will apologize for it. Rather unfortunate. And mortifying. My company is named after clouds not slurs. Actually it’s named after a ferret, but that’s a different story.

Hey question: Does anyone here own a Rivian or a Tesla and can tell me if the version of Spotify in those cars will allow you to download your playlist so you’re not constantly streaming? Long shot, I know, but I am very curious about this.

I could Google it, but you guys are so much better than Google. Pat yourselves on the back.

RIP to Alan Greenspan who took an adolescent obsession with Ayn Rand and foisted it upon all of us and destroyed the imagination and optimism of millions of people in the process. Dude went to Julliard. Shoulda stuck with it.

Congratulations to Olivia Rodrigo for her awesome amazing new Lilith Fair 2.0, Daisy Chain Fields. I mean, Sarah Maclaughlin is even coming. All the profits — all of them, not the usual BS “a portion” thing celebs do — will be going to a host of charities including the Center for Reproductive Rights, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Black Mamas Matter Alliance, Planned Parenthood and other women’s charities. The tickets are not cheap, but for the lineup, they are not expensive, bout the same as a day of Coachella. And, of course, the profits go to those charities so even if you are getting gouged, well, maybe it’s okay. And I doubt Garbage or Bikini Kill are charging a bajillion dollars to play this thing.

Man, billionaires should not exist but if we’re gonna have a pop star be a billionaire I would take Olivia over you-know-who.

Unfortunately it is the weekend after the first day of school here and while I am sorely tempted to pick my daughter up from school, cart her straight to the airport, fly, sleep, rock, fly, sleep and go back to school, that… well, that’s a bit extravagant for me these days, although I must confess this is exactly what my 30 year-old self hoped I could do in old age.

So never say never I guess.

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We’re listening to Gia Margaret today, who is not playing Daisy Chain Fields, but if they had a chill-out tent I’m sure they’d invite her along. She’s great. Mellow electronic pop? I say that but the song I’m listening to now has acoustic guitar and… is that a mandolin? I don’t even know man. Anyway it’s very pretty, I like this record a lot. This one is called Singing. I liked her last one a lot too. It was called Romantic Piano. Check her out, she is great.

Valve finally launched the Steam Box yesterday. Been waiting for this thing for months because I want to play Cities Skylines 2 on a PC, because it only comes out on PCs, and I hate PCs. I mean, Tim Apple can suck it but that does not mean I am gonna buy a PC. Piece that shit together like I have time on my hands or something, connecting wires like I… I mean, like. I get it. Some people love putting all the pieces together, and a different version of me would probably love it. Actually this version of me would probably love it if the OS were tolerable. Steam Box also doesn’t use Windows. It uses Valve OS, built on Linux, and I don’t have to deal with Linux to use it. I firmly believe that people over 50 should be using the command line interface as little as possible, and this includes AI. No command line interfaces for olds. Maybe I should put that on a T-Shirt. Anyway, there are other concrete reasons to prefer a Steam Box, most notably that its HDMI has CEC, which means you can turn the Steam Box on and off with your TV using a single remote, a thing all XBoxes, etc., will do and not a single PC will.

It is, however, unfortunately a smidge underpowered and about $200 too expensive, because of AI bullshit. Not Valve’s AI bullshit — that company seems blissfully, mostly free of AI, at least on the consumer side. God know what they’re employees are suffering through. I was hoping it would be $800-900. It is $1,000 - $1,200. Valve has been very transparent and explicit about how much the global AI shortage is fucking them on this thing (and their wildly popular Steam deck). It sucks. Terrible time to launch a computer-based product. Hopefully the RAM shortage causes car companies to stop putting computers in their cars, but of course that won’t happen because $200 matters a lot less on $50k than it does on $1k.

Given all that, I do wish they put the processor on a daughterboard — even some weird DRM’d one — for a future processor upgrade. But I don’t think the processors lack of power to play Cyberpunk at 4k/60FPS without reducing the ray tracing is relevant to my needs playing Cities Skylines 2.

(Probably. Insert long aside here about the very exciting developments in the Cities Skylines world where we all thought the game was gonna die but in fact has experienced a stunning rebirth never before seen in the game industry and man I want to read a behind-the-scenes interview with the business execs who had the cojones to pull that off, because it really does belong in the Harvard Business Review or something.)

Anyway I signed up for the lottery to buy the thing. Even at the increase I think it is probably the correct move for someone like me who just wants a no-hassle basic gaming PC so he and his daughter can play puzzle and sim games.

Netflix cancelled The Boroughs an I am pissed. It was so fun, celebrated the elderly, harkened back to 80’s Spielberg and Stephen King novels, but did something new and unique. If it were on Apple TV it would be a global phenomenon, as we are seeing with Widows Bay. Similar vibe. I should finish Widow’s Bay, huh. People say it ended strong.

You can argue Netflix is smart and ruthless and if things aren’t giant hits and have a large production budget they get killed fast. And this does work for them when they get a Squid Games or something. But also… it does not work? Second season of Wednesday was as good as the first, had nowhere near the cultural impact. Some shows take time to grow. The Boroughs had a large production budget but I suspect a second season would be far cheaper than a first. The cast was outstanding. It ranked in the top ten. Sometimes it seems very clear you should roll the dice for another season. I am bummed.

Streamers, man. They will all break your heart in the end.

Jane is behind me playing Steam games on her Mac. Yesterday we all went into Chapel Hill and got dinner and walked around and she had a great time but also I think she is getting pretty bored of being the only kid around. She needs a play date with some friends her age soon. We can easily lose ourselves talking about adult stuff and forget she’s there, or forget our conversation is boring to her. We’re all trying — Sean, especially, has been amazingly good with her this time.

But it’s time for some kids in her life again.

Don’t have a playlist done today but we watched a lot of fun music on Youtube yesterday, including this gem. Lotta Laufey fans in the room last night, but I don’t know much about her. But this video was great and has that awesome woman who won the medal in skating with the awesome hair - Alysia Liu. I need to investigate more.

Have a lovely Tuesday. We can do that, right? It is still possible in this world to have a lovely Tuesday? Gotta be.