Good morning good morning. Friday woo. Headed to LA tonight. Gonna see myself some Bikini Kill and Garbage and Chappel Roan and Olivia. Probably won’t wake up in time for Die Spitz, alas. All very exciting.

Here’s what I think we should do. We have a nice list of the companies most responsible for climate change. Whenever there is a climate catastrophe, we work our way down the list. We start at the top, we put their CEOs on trial, we subpoena and do discovery till the cows come home, plow through all their records, find the inevitable evidence that they knew what they were doing, and we send em to jail. If the CEOs wanna turn on each other, point fingers at the CEO before them and say “he started it” or turn whistleblower, pin it all on a Rasputinesque underling, that’s fine, we’ll consider it. Ultimately, the right people go to jail.

Then we move on to the next company on the list with the next climate catastrophe.

Seeing the horrific images from Nepal, watching the videos is awful enough when I’m doing it by choice. I’m not morbid or insane, it is a small digital ritual, memorial, respecting the dead, yeah that’s it. But when the feed just shoves em in your face, unbidden, while you’re watching two drunken middle-aged men argue about Hassan Piker or some shit, well, that is fucked up, I do not need that, I need more therapy now. God. So horrific.

That is a crazy-ass three paragraphs to write in succession. The modern world is so fucked up we are all so fucked up. How are there not more therapists we need more therapists. Who can even be a therapist in this world. Why does religion fail us so why don’t people make a useful new religion. Where is my Orison of Sonmi-451?

That movie is so criminally underrated it isn’t even funny.

Started re-watching Speed Racer recently, too. Emma came down while I was watching it and the thing is so utterly bonkers visually, every frame. She looked at me sitting there, the utter insanity that was on the screen and was very confused.

Oh shit we better be careful I might start going on about how Jupiter Ascending is a masterpiece but you maybe aren’t ready for that yet.

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We’re listening to the new Russian Circles this morning and, you know… the beginning of the great pact between Shoegaze and Metal was one of the most thrilling musical events of the 21st century. But, alas, I think the zeitgeist, the avant garde has passed by the original purveyors of this deal: Russian Circles, Deafheaven, Nothing their ilk. The genre has passed you by. We have crazier blackgaze now. Now the world belongs to Abriction and Sadness and Uboa. Russian Circle are coming to town with Pelican and I am trying to decide if I should go. I bet it will be good. I’ve noticed the Metalgaze OGs are all reverting back to more pure metal, which is an artistically questionable decision in the world where shoegaze is king. But it does make for some pretty killer concerts.

Also the album is called Nine but it is their eleventh album and only has seven tracks. What. The. Fuck.

I am being unfair. I’m only on track three so far and this one sounds pretty killer. This album is pretty good.

So I’m really trying to wrap my head around this Meta settlement. On the one hand, it is the second-largest public health fine in history, after the tobacco master settlement agreement. And the tobacco agreement was a landmark, turned the tide against a major public health crisis, smoking has never been the same again. Really just a masterpiece of litigation.

Buuuuttt…. on the other hand: it is not clear to me so far if the money from the settlement will be used in a similar way to the tobacco settlement, where the states pooled the money and spent a ton, if not most, of it on anti-smoking awareness, including a major, well-funded, national, multi-year advertising campaign (which yours truly worked on a little bit early in his career). Jeff Jackson, our NC AG who was a signee to the settlement, issued a press release that does not bode well. Not because he is making poor decisions about what to do with the money, but rather because it makes very clear that it’s not up to him: “Attorney General Jackson is encouraging the General Assembly to use the money to fund after-school and summer school programs across the state, crisis helplines for struggling children, and school health personnel.”

So that sucks. I don’t know much about the mechanics of the settlement. Wait let me rephrase. I don’t know much about the decision-making mechanics of the states AGs and if it was even a possibility to create some sort of master-pool of marketing money. But it seems it does not, is not going to exist. Maybe a group of the more liberally-lead states could voluntarily pool their money together to make one. They should absolutely do that. But there is a snowball’s chance in hell that the gerrymandered Republican North Carolina legislature is gonna let Jeff do that. Alas.

And then we have this whole weird-ass component where a big part of the fine only comes into play if Youtube, TikTok et all also sign on to the restrictions that Facebook has agreed to? That is fucked up and I do not fully understand it yet. Nor do I understand why Facebook is doing a PR campaign urging their competitors to sign on. I mean I guess the cynical answer is that $12ish billion dollars is nothing to Facebook and they are gonna use this PR opportunity to make their competitors look bad. But the whole thing is really confusing and I cannot comprehend why the states’ AGs would consent to this.

I do have 12 hours on airplanes this weekend, and I’ve sent the settlement document to my Kindle, but I’m not sure it will even explain the strategic rationale behind this.

Maybe I should text Jeff, name drop.

Finally I don’t really think the non-financial concessions are that big of a deal. I mean don’t get me wrong, they’re good — kids shouldn’t be on Facebook in the middle of the night, getting anyone off the algorithm is a good thing (sign me up), etc. etc. But they certainly don’t seem to go far enough. Probably shoulda just kicked all kids off of FB and Instagram completely.

Jane is so excited about this trip and seeing Olivia and Chappel and Garbage it is just the best. It is so worth missing one day of school. We almost didn’t do it because we have so many friends in LA that it seems stupid to go there for less than a week. We’ll be lucky to see one or two of them. But even without that I think it’ll be a lovely time, and I do love spending time with my family.

We played Tiles in the car this morning — a FordOS Tetris rip-off, sort-of. We hugged whenever we got rid of a garbage tile. Then I fucked one up really badly, made it so we couldn’t get rid of the garbage tile at all. Had to restart the game. I said I was sorry and tried to hug her and:

“no hugs for losers.”

Maybe I need to do some more parenting.

No mix tape this morning because I want to show you this very good video about Dolly. Even if you know a lot about Dolly and the good she’s done, this is still a very interesting video. It’s a bit too “Youtube Video Essay” ish, but also Youtube Video Essays are… kinda good? Not the worst thing in the world!

Okay well if all goes well by the time I see you again we will be in LA. I am gonna try and write Monday even though it will be a pain. Maybe I’ll do it Sunday night or something. But if you don’t see me till Tuesday don’t freak out.

Byeeeee.