Good morning good morning hello hi howdy how are you I missed you I hope everything is going okay. Good to be home. My desktop photos are walls of nostalgia making me feel old and washed up. Went to the grocery store this morning and almost accidentally got into some other dude’s Lightning because my truck had a twinsie at the store. I say twinsie now because I am surrounded by kids and women in my life. Which is awesome. Twinsie twinsie. The dude wore a light blue button down shirt and khaki pants and therefore was an “old dude” even though he could well have been younger than me. I remember experiencing this when I was interiewing a CRO candidate at Tumblr and thinking “this guy is so old” because he was wearing a light blue button down shirt and khakis. Then I did the math on his resume and realized he was two years younger than me.

And that was like 20 years ago.

Had this feeling at Daisy Chain Fields too. I would see old punk rockers or goths and think “look at that old punk rocker they look cool but they look OLD” but not me no no I am a young punk rocker goth. Until I would catch a glimpse of my visage while looking at one of emma’s photos or in the reflection of my phone. Oh shit. I AM ONE OF THEM.

As per tradition on trips, I don’t read books on the plane, I read articles; all the longform articles that I have sent to my kindle from my computer in the middle of the day when I don’t have time to read them. I use Apple Readability in Safari and then an Automator script to turn it into a PDF and send it to my kindle. It’s a pretty good system. Wish I could make it work on my Android phone. One of the things I miss about iOS. Except of course I’m sure Android does it. But, like I said, I am old. SO: Article roundup time!

If you want to get depressed about Palestine, here are two articles from The New Yorker about the current state of things with the new Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory: one is an interview with a former IDF colonel who now works to protect Palestinians, and one is an analysis of the number of attacks on Jewish settlers now compared to the past. Neither is very reassuring. The two-state solution is all but dead. Honestly I don’t even understand Israel’s strategy here. They will be a minority in their homeland before too long, and that will be unsustainable for them. So, if there is no two-state solution, what’s their long term plan other than political irrelevance or genocide?

Oh.

Semi-relatedly, long piece in The New Yorker about the government’s efforts to deport permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil because he said some things you didn’t like. We do have laws, of course, saying that we don’t have to make people citizens that hold certain beliefs. But traditionally those beliefs are outlined in advance. Now the government seems to be saying that they can make them up retroactively, at whim. It is fucking insane and should give anyone pause. Also the poor guy is on his last appeal, to the Supreme Court, which he will probably lose, and that is going to almost certainly set an absolutely horrific president against free speech and for unfettered presidential power. Awesome, awesome.

(I recently remembered I subscribe to The New Yorker! Ever since I switched to digital-only I keep forgetting.)

Learned a bit about Metagenomics, the ability to scan your spinal fluid (or blood, but it seems best used for spinal fluid) for not one but every living organism and parasite at once. That seems pretty cool. I like science. Science is swell.

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!

Listening to the new solo record from Stephen O’Mally of SunO))). It is called Avaeken, maybe in all caps, and it is out now on Dais records. It is a drone tone record. I like it. Not a lot going on. Very calming. I can use that right now.

Speaking of Dais before I left for Daisy Chain Fields I was listening to “Confetti” by Cold Cave in the car and it got me thinking about that other gothy band on Dais and I couldn’t remember their name. I was at risk of having one of those anxiety-inducing brain fart moments where you couldn’t remember the name of something you know, but luckily I forgot all about it…

… until I got in the car this morning after the trip and the song picked up right where I left off, and the anxiety all came rushing back like I hadn’t been to the other coast and a rock festival in between.

But luckily the name came to me before I went crazy or declared that absolutely crushing defeat and the ensuing self-loathing and embarrassment, you know it, of having to Google the answer. You know the feeling.

Anyway the band was Drab Majesty.

A rock-related item: an excellent interview with Sam Rosenthal, founder of Projekt Records, the stalwart American goth label that’s been around for almost 40 years, and main dude in Black Tape for a Blue Girl, the band that’s been around for just as long. Career-spanning and very insightful. I enjoyed it very much.

And if you are a Pynchon fan, my friend and old bandmate Aug Stone has an absolutely thrilling delve into Pynchon’s recent novel, how it ties into his other ones, and fleshes out Pynchon’s sprawling history of 20th century America. Seriously this entry into Aug’s newsletter belongs in the TLS or something. Also some profound insights into the concept of shame, which I could probably take to heart.

Moving on, I read the Facebook settlement, and it had no mention of the extra several billion in money to the states once TikTok, Youtube, Etc., sign on to them. So I was still confused. Then I read several articles about the Facebook settlement and I sort of think I get it now. The NY Times had a good insider account of the settlement talks, and it seems Facebook has a new CLO who was attracted to the job by the prospects of making a settlement. So he called the States Attorneys General and offered them a ton of money. That seemed like… a pretty no-brainer way to settle?? And if that was all it took, why did it take the genius of a new CLO to do that?

And that, my friend, is where the Youtube money comes in. I am sure this was more of an internal sale tactic: alleviating concerns of being hobbled against their competition, and the ability to browbeat and turn this into a PR “win” for Facebook. THAT, I think, is what this new CLO brought to the table: a way to convince Zuck there was a silver lining to all of this.

Like a popsicle after the dentist. That poor boy child.

Also I think it’s hilarious that as soon as they settled this, 22 states go and immediately sue Amazon for obviously, obviously, fucking everyone on pricing and advertising. Go States Attorneys General. Rah Rah Rah.

Read an interesting article about Melissa Auf Der Maur’s new book of photographs from her rock n roll heyday. I did not. know she was a photographer that is awesome. Bought the book. It comes out next month this month oh shit it’s September now. Very excited. Will keep you apprised.

Read a lot of Dolly content and she was as awesome as it seems, Carl was pretty rad, I wouldn’t say they had an open relationship but it did seem a little don’t ask don’t tell ish, which is of course the best kind of open relationship because humans are fragile and broken. Dolly was the best. She is hereby a saint, the first saint, in my Anti AI religion.

Oh I read the long article about the Nobel prize-winning pedophile who kept stealing boys from Papua New Guinea and bringing them back to America and diddling them and writing all about it in his journals and then having the NIH publish his journals and put them on a shelf and then eventually 30 years go by and some post doc decides to read the journals and, well, he goes to jail for… a whole year. And the whole division of the NIH knew the whole time. So that is cool. And then he loves jail because he’s a reclusive reader and they let him read and write all year, he gets out and goes right back out there continuing to be a famous and esteemed Nobel prize-winning laureate and no one seems to mind. Awesome, awesome. That one was rough.

And I got around to reading the article that the Times and The Bulwark were both too scared to publish, even though it had passed legal review and fact-checking, because the DCCC and DSCC, through Mark Elias no less how disappointing is that, threatened to sue even though they found no efforts. So, you know, all that Dem text spam you get is just a giant scam and robs old senile people of all their money. Just wonderful. I have yet to find a comprehesive article about specifially which Dem congresspeople use these services. The article brilliantly only calls out Hakim Jeffries. I was pretty done with that guy already but this helps. Of course, once I do find a list of every one who uses these companies to scam the elderly, ten or twenty beloved Dem congresspeople will 100% be on the list, just watch. It’s all broken, man, it’s all broken. Can we try and save our country without, you know, robbing the elderly maybe?

Finally I give you Allison Pill’s commentary on being a child actor. I did not know Allison Pill was a child actor. I only knew her — or thought I only knew her — from Picard. But no, that wasn’t true, I also knew her from Scott Pilgrim, The Newsroom, Devs (Which I’ll be re-watching soon), Hail Caesar!, Vice and Milk. Pill does not really make a concrete set of recommendations — I mean, she does, but she recognizes that the job is always going to suck, always going to be scarring. She points to the recent use of Florence Pugh in Little Women playing both the younger child and older version of her character, and honestly, that casting choice didn’t take me out of the movie at all. Didn’t even notice.

Maybe we do not need child actors at all.

Excellent, smooth flight all the way home until Jane cracked when we landed and took the iPad away. Hit mommy, kicked her, hit me, told me I should chop off my head, screamed and screamed all through RDU, most of the way home. Absolutely wrecked me. I do not have the emotional fortitude to laugh off all her cruelty. She was contrite this morning, I guess I will let it go. I want to tell her that one day, she will do this to someone she loves deeply and they will turn around and walk out the door and never come back, no second chance. But that’s… maybe not the best thing to say to an eight year-old and in any case, she already knows this, which is why she confines this behavior solely to Emma and I. Also even after 11 hours of sleep sunday night and 11 hours of sleep last night, she slept through her alarm this morning, so she is clearly still catching up from sleep.

Maybe you can’t take your child on a trans-continental redeye rock festival run without consequences!

Will she cherish the memory of that trip? Look back fondly on it? Was it worth it? Travel

Let us put a pin in our calendar for the year 2037 or so and I will let you know.

Do I have a playlist handy today? oh look! I do! Drone! DRONE ON FRIENDS.

Okay I am going to try and re-combobulate before I head to NYC on Thursday for Underworld so I can go from seeing teenage girls cry at music to middle-aged men cry at music all in the same week.