Good morning good morning hi hello how are you? Happy Friday. I have it off, that is nice. Today is the first day of my schtick where I take all my remaining vacation time and take every Friday off for the rest of the year. Man I love this time of year.

Also, advertising. Kinda a big thing in Q4. A few of our clients are rushing to get a couple more integrations done. But mostly, pubs and games sit back and let the money roll in in Q4, hoping to get to full-year profitability. Last year was the first full-year profitable year for Nimbus Advertising Solutions Inc., since we sold off Timehop. We achieved profitability in December. This year, we were profitable from day 1 of 2026. Quite nice. Let the robots work their magic and the money roll in.

I should write more about advertising in here for you guys sometime. But not today. But I promise we are not an amoral company and we don’t do shit with your data. Not our thing.

Thank you to Jack who sent me an article on how to get the Cloudflare thing to go away. It did the trick. So far so good.

Excited about my day off. Plus it’s raining so I can’t do outdoor chores oh boo hoo. Attic work here I come.

Just back from Walmart and McDonald’s. McDonald’s was devoid of old men today, very sad. Wait. Except for me. Oh shit are we the bad guys? There was a mom and her daughter there (I assume). The guy who works there who talks about sports asked me about a game with Jacksonville last night. I didn’t even pretend to know what was up with it. The latina lady who delivers my food to my table slowly grows more friendly. The place was mostly empty. I assume because of the rain. All the landscapers aren’t working today.

They were playing “Forever in Blue Jeans” by Neil Diamond, perhaps my favorite Neil Diamond tune. Texted with Nick about it. He pointed out that “it’s easy to forget how much the cultural significance of jeans has changed. That contry craze of the 70’s was instrumental, as was arena rock for changing the t-shirt.”

In a lot of ways, I said, “Forever in Blue Jeans” is like a goth or punk anthem.

Cultural criticism at 8 AM at the McDonald’s courtesy of Rick and Nick.

Walmart was just fine. Reduced stimuli hours, no music. They are still out of sprouts, alas. Need to make a run to an Asian grocery. The pharmacy wasn’t open yet, whoops. I need to get my Wegovy from them. I use a wonderful local pharmacy but they couldn’t deliver, so they referred me to Walmart. It is better than CVS but I stand by the local pharmacists they are dandy.

Peltola and Colom still haven’t won yet. But they are both ahead. Feeling good about a 56-seat Senate delegation. So far the house is 253 I think it could get to 260.

Was thinking about the absolute rout of Republicans, and here is my thesis: whenever you say something like “every Republican who didn’t go full anti-Trump is culpable,” the pundits think it’s too extreme. Your level-headed “moderate centrist” friends think it’s too extreme. Your old-school Republicans clinging to the idea of a party before Trump disagree.

But it turns out most of the country did, in fact, believe that every single Republican who didn’t go full anti-Trump is culpable.

I cannot think of a single major anti-Trump Republican left in power in the US. They are all out in the wilderness. But I suspect one or two of them coulda squeaked by.

But not the ones who enabled this.

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!

We’re listening to the new (ish, March) Notwist album this morning. News from Planet Zombie. Just learned about it the other day from some dude on the internet who posted his favorite albums of the year. I guess we’re ramping up already for year-end lists. Don’t know this dude but the, like, four albums I had listened to on his list I liked, so I trusted him. Listen to every record everyone mentions. Put it on my tombstone. Just started it but the first 2 minutes of the first track are pretty good. Before this finished the recent Ed O’Brien (of Radiohead) solo album and it was beautiful. So far so good on this stranger’s list.

(Edit: we’re much further into the album now and it is great. I had lost track of these guys years ago and they sill rule.)

Yesterday I listened to all eight albums my old friend Corin had posted on the internet that he said were great. All power pop. I am not the biggest power pop fan, but I went for it. Turns out I like Sloan a lot. And Matthew Sweet. And the Posies, super good. And I do actually like the solo album from Martin Carr of the Boo Radleys. Was not so into Cotton Mather, Velvet Crush, XTC, or Crowded House. Last two were a surprise since I like their hits. Who knew.

Been reading this book about the history of books, called The Book by Keith Houston, recommended by the great Robin Sloan. It is good but I am having a hard time with it. It’s… slightly too literal? And it does that thing where it gives humanizing anecdotes about people that are not actually relevant to the story, just sort of background color. I don’t know, I can’t explain it. I think I just expected something… more from a book about what he calls “one of the most powerful objects of our time” besides a literal examination of each of its physical properties.

BUT it is also very interesting and I do like each chapter individually — one about papyrus, one about parchment, one about woodblocks, one about illuminated texts, etc. Read the chapter on illuminated texts last night and it ruled. Just wonderful. Illuminated texts are so awesome. I restrained myself but I added a $265 high-end reproduction of the Book of the Kells to my shopping cart. I want it so bad. What a gorgeous book.

The book got me thinking about monks, monks are so cool, I definitely woulda been a monk if I had been alive in the middle ages, the majesty of monasteries alone woulda been enough to convince me that god was real. Or at, least, you know, roll with it in order to have a roof over my head and some intellectual stimulation. This got me thinking about The Name of the Rose, which I re-watched recently in 4k and totally holds up, you should watch it again.

But it also got me thinking about the greatest monk movie ever made, Into Great Silence, a three-hour, almost completely silent film depicting the lives of the Carthusian Monks of Chartreuse, i.e. the ones who make the booze. I saw it at the Brattle with Annie and it remains one of my favorite movies of all time. It has, sadly, as far as I can tell, only ever been released on DVD. I have it in my Plex, but I have been holding out for a 4k edition before I rewatch it. But I dunno, man. It’s been 21 years. Maybe it’s time for a re-watch.

Was reading this chapter and it mentioned Charlemagne and I am a little hazy on Charlemagne these days, and I kinda wanted a little refresher. Took a pause and hit Charlemagne’s Wikipedia page and, yeah, man. Charlegemagne’s Wikipedia page is 17,604 words as of this morning. I ain’t readin all that. I’m happy for you tho. Or sorry.

So this got me thinking: is this a good idea? Wiki-Wikipedia? Recall that “wiki” comes from a Hawaiian language and means “quick.”

Like… Wikipedia should have a “quick” layer — 100 to 1,000 words, tops, strict maximum. You can turn on “quick mode” for the whole site. Of course you can press a button and see the full article. But on the quick layer, you get short, quick articles of the main point. Ideally written by a single expert — definitely not by AI fuck that shit — but, you know, Wikipedia is pretty f’n good at its thing, so it would probably work even if they were done in the normal Wikipedia way.

I would love that so much.

Wiki-Wikipedia. Make it so.

Jane and I listened to Tones on Tail this morning, she didn’t star it, that was sad. And we listened to Soccer Mommy, which she starred, and some weird mushroom band I had no recollection of and she didn’t like that at all.

I told her the story about how I am the godfather of the son of a semi-famous musician and she told me she didn’t think other daddies had so many stories about bands they knew. I felt very well-chuffed about that. Thank you for the compliment, Jane. I like bands. I dig music.

She did not take an umbrella or raincoat to school in the rain again. Refuses. One of these days some parent is going to judge me but what are you gonna do. She did brush her teeth, though, that was nice. She is getting pretty good about her morning teeth.

Last night she stole the entire cauldron of Halloween candy and hid it in her secret tent fort. The candy was a mix of the remaining candy from our trunk-or-treat giveaway and her own candy she collected from trick-or-treating. So I kinda get where she was coming from. But Daddy needs his post-chili-pepper lunch chocolate Janey-o. Very clever, though. I gotta admit.

Got a moody and quiet playlist for you today. It is dark, very dark, and rainy here today so it fits my locale quite nicely. I am pretty sure there is one song on this playlist that gets big and rocking at the end and I meant to take it off but didn’t but now I can’t remember which one it was sorry. Not that many of you listen to these anyway until I go back to Spotify. If I ever get rich I will employ a GMHHAY editor who adds links to the playlist on all platforms. That will be my one concession to wealth I promise.

Anyway all of this except Blaze Foley, Matthew Sweet, Martin Carr and XTC are new. All are great. Man there is so much good music out there it just keeps coming musicians are so great art is so great.

I dig music.

Ok off I go. Plumber is en route and I am so ready for CHORES CHORES CHORES.

Have a lovely weekend.