Good morning good morning. Rain. Sleep. Brain fogginess. Man I spoke on the phone yesterday for so long my voice was going by the end of the day. Six hours of phone calls and meetings. And none of them were those ones where you’re a silent listener and can secretly play Civilization through the whole meeting. Six hours of intense talking about intense, complicated, consequential business things. I do my best to have you guys here forget I even have a job. Who wants to read more about AdTech? But I gotta tell you. That was a lot.

Today I get to spend the bulk of the day working on next week’s company meeting presentation. That is much more satisfying. I love working in Keynote. Takes me back to my immediate post-college days where I made my living as a PowerPoint Jockey for Hire, doing presentations for audit and consulting firms. McKinsey, Deloitte, BCG, Monitor Group, EY, KPMG, BBN, you name it, there I was making PowerPoint decks. There sure was a lot of money to be made in 1993 understanding how master slides worked.

As an aside, the memoir of Robert Gaskins, the founder of PowerPoint is a masterpiece. Unsung hero of Silicon Valley.

Someone — a stranger reader not a friend reader — didn’t like all the poop talk yesterday and unsubscribed. Poop poop poop. Normalize talking about poop. My god imagine if Trump was obsessed with his poop instead of power what a better place the world would be.

Looked at the news this morning while eating breakfast with Jane. Maybe not a good idea. They say that Blanche isn’t get confirmed but he’s gonna get confirmed. The war is hot again. Man it is so weird to live your life while you watch your country casually lose a war big time and all you can really do is sigh. I guess we have the Chinese to thank for non-soaring oil prices, which is also darkly depressing.

BUT: The Republicans might get hoisted by their own petard in two fun ways: They are mouthing off about removing the immunity of Fauci’s pardon and trying to prosecute him for contempt of congress, which really seems like a bad move to do for the party that, you know, lives off of pardons and doing contempt? I like Fauci just fine but… you know… if you wanna take one for the team, I am down. And Trump is bugging them to kill the fillibuster. Can you imagine? What a stupid fucking move for the Republicans. Fucking go for it, man. You know how much we could get done when we are in control again because there’s no filibuster? I’d say he’s an idiot but — given that he wants to do this in order to pass the SAVE act among other things — it is so, so clear this man has zero intention of spending another day of his live as a non-president. Still, though. Fuck the filibuster. Bring it.

Oh and Chuck Schumer announced a bill that establishes some independent congressional agency exclusively devoted to rooting out corruption in the administrative branch and a) of course it will never pass, and b) it is probably as milquetoast AF don’t make me read it, it’s still a decent thing? Put AOC or Warren in that, Rand Paul’s jagoff vendetta against Fauci pierces the presidential pardon bubble, the filibuster is gone, and some of these people go to jail go to jail go to jail go to ja—

Sorry brain fart there.

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We’re listening to Johanna’s House of Glamour again this morning. Just hit play on my queue and gave this album another listen. I have listened to everything in the queue, and all my new records are back in NC so I am in a re-listening phase at the moment. Or, if you have anything new for me to check out, send it my way.

Got a Google Alert on my name yesterday, which lead to a kind of interesting article about a new Star Trek comic where apparently some alien race tries to destroy the Federation by injecting capitalism into it. Funny idea. The author the article then references my Trek book, but then also references a few whackjob economists who grumble about trek’s “socialism” and make jabs at socialists.

One of them said the chief failing of socialists is that they think there’s some big pot of money out there and that it just needs to be redistributed, but that there isn’t a big pot of money, people make the pots and money. That sounds so smart, doesn’t it? It is, of course, bunk in several ways. First, of course, by virtually every economic system from the most orthodox to hetro, money is a proxy. A “medium of exchange” that sort of thing. You could look at a ultra-hetero-barely-economist economist like George Bataille who talks about money being the manifestation of the energy that encircles the world, and honestly he’s not that far off. Mayhaps moreso the manifestation of the energy in humanity, more akin to a Marxian (such a better word than Marxist) interpretation.

But also who the fuck cares. The money makes you evil and you should not have so much of it just like you should not have anthrax or a nuclear bomb. “But I MADE THE BOMB waaaaaaaaah.” Doesn’t matter. Not good for society that you have it. Carry on.

People are mad at Facebook for spending too much money on AI it is pretty funny. Their free cash flow went to zero last quarter - they took the thirty eight ish billion dollars they made in a single quarter and spent it all on data centers and AI. This is so hilariously sad and bonkers it makes my heart soar. And there’s this great graph lemme dig it out for you.

Look at that shit. See that other big dip, like in 22 or so? That was their hilarious stupid Metaverse bet. And this is so much worse!

What a clusterf**k.

I try to believe this AI idiocy could die off. Lisa is editing the GMHHAY book for 22/23 ish and there’s so much crypto shit in there and it is all gone gone gone we are free of that in our lives it is so nice. It could happen again! It feels like it’s getting closer!

It could be my tulip thesis all over again! Tulip mania and tulips were not the same thing, tulips are kinda cool. If we can end up with AI helping coders code and scientists science and it just leaves the rest of alone I could maybe handle that.

Jane and Emma went to the LEGO thingy and a movie yesterday while I talked on the phone six hours, so I did not get to see enough of her. So I did a full daddy bedtime last night as Emma went out to see a friend. We got a shower in. She did not complain or whine all night. It was lovely. This morning we had a nice breakfast at the Ukrainian place. She kept moving the table around. It was disconcerting.

Now she is back on her population-decline-in-Korea kick. This has to be the 100th time she has watched this video. It is SO WEIRD. I try to ask her about it and she just says she likes it.

Mysterious. Like this photo.

Shoegaze playlist for you today. Jussi and I watched the Chapterhouse KEXP session yesterday. Wish I could have seen this reunion tour. She and I saw the one maybe 20 years ago, Middle East down, about half full. It is crazy how Shoegaze is now compared to then. Really is one of the bright spots in life. More shoegaze! My friend Bill said recently something along the lines of “more bands that sound like this come out every day and I am a sucker for them all. I could not agree more. This particular mix is a mix of old and new. Smashing Orange is a phenomenal American shoegaze band from the 90s that deserves their revival moment in the sun. Johanna’s isn’t really shoegaze but… it kinda is? And I love them so much I just put em on here. Crazy how loveliescrushing is getting this big new retro reissue campaign. You love to see it.

OK have a lovely Thursday Im going to do my best to do exactly that.