2023
Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for August 30, 1971. Nixon goes to China.
Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for August 17, 1971. Meanwhile, here in 2023, there’s a dispensary on every corner.
I’m attending an event in a few days for which I’ll be wearing a suit and tie, which means I had to bring my suits in to be cleaned and pressed.
The last time I wore a suit was on my last business trip, December 2019. I figured then that I had no travel scheduled until February, so I the suits in a pile in my closet to be brought to the cleaners.
And they’ve been sitting in that pile for nearly four years.
Telling Julie “I’m bringing my suits to the cleaners” and then doing so was weird and retro, like using a rotary phone.
The dry cleaner hasn’t changed. They still give out a paper claim ticket, rather than using a fancypants app.
Ron Rosenbaum is from Long Island. The Long Islandest part of Long Island—South Shore. And yet he hates Billy Joel. Is that allowed?
The beauty of finished software: Finished software is software that’s done—it doesn’t need updates.
I missed a message from a client yesterday morning because Slack moved everything around for no apparent reason at all.
“I started reading Ed McBain when I was probably 11 or 12,” [Stephen] King said, looking at his row of several novels by the prolific author of crime procedurals. “The bookmobile would come by. We lived out in the country. The first thing I remember is, I’m reading one of these books, and [detectives] Carella and Kling go to interview a woman about some crime. And she’s sitting there in her slip and she’s drunk, and she grabs her breast and squeezes and says, ‘In your eye, copper.’ And I thought to myself: This is not the Hardy Boys. Okay? It made an impression. It felt more real.”
Also, King about why he doesn’t think about his legacy:
“There are very few popular novelists who have a life after death. Agatha Christie, for one. I can’t think of anybody else who’s a popular novelist, really. People like John D. MacDonald, he was a terrifically popular novelist in his day, but when he died, his books disappeared off the racks. They were ultimately disposable. I think that a couple of the horror novels might last. They might be read 50 or a hundred years from now, ‘The Shining’ and ‘Salem’s Lot’ and ‘It.’ If you ask people, ‘What vampire do you know?,’ they’d say, ‘Dracula.’ ‘Well, who invented Dracula?’ ‘I don’t [expletive] know.’ So, 50 or a hundred years from now, people will say: ‘Oh, Pennywise, the clown. Yeah, sure.’ ‘Who is Stephen King?’ They won’t know.”
— Book Tour: A tour of Stephen King’s personal library
Now I’m thinking about deceased popular novelists who are still bringing in new readers in large numbers. Asimov? Bradbury? Is Hemingway widely read by anybody younger than Boomers?
When I was 11 years old, I wanted to be Barnard Hughes when I grew up. I’m behind schedule.
I don’t like Halloween. It celebrates death and decay. I like a little of that—I loved the Addams Family and Beetlejuice. But an entire month of zombies and skeletons is too much.
Also, while I like people changing up their identities, confining it to a single day seems unhealthy. People should change up their identities all the time.
This is just me. If you love Halloween, I’m fine with that.
Christmas, on the other hand, is awesome. I’m a Jew for Christmas.
The dog usually has to be coaxed down the front outside stairs to the front gate. I think it’s because we only go down them once or twice a week so she’s not used to doing it. It is a slow process, and she stops to thoroughly sniff every third step.
But this morning I paused on the top landing, because I realized I had not checked my podcast downloads to see what I’d be listening to on our walk.
When I looked up from my phone, she was already down at the foot of the stairs, looking alert and happy.
And there was a big cat sitting on the outside wall of the house beside the front gate.
For the dog, there’s little that’s more interesting than a cat. And ours won’t go anywhere near her.
Overheard: There’s over 7 billion ppl in this world and I’m really the best driver, that’s so wild to me
Overheard: Just wait until conspiracy theorists discover they’re part of a conspiracy to use conspiracy theorists to spread disinformation via conspiracy theories.
Cory Doctorow “The idea that creative workers aren't workers is bullshit.“
Cory: Why creative workers get screwed in labor negotiations (until very recently):
Creative workers are part of a class of workers who suffer from “vocational awe,” the sense that because your job is satisfying and/or worthy, you don’t deserve to get paid for it.
Also:
The attempt to divide-and-rule “knowledge workers” from “industrial workers” is a transparent bid to shatter solidarity and make it easier to abuse and exploit all workers.
And:
A strong, unified labor movement is necessary if America is to save itself from inequality, racism, the climate emergency – the whole polycrisis. The idea that creative workers aren’t workers is bullshit – and so is the lie that all workers are uncreative.
Threads is in the early days of the social media enshittification cycle. That’s why it’s so great—for now
The goal now is to attract users by the hundreds of millions, so Facebook is making Threads great for users. And it’s working—Threads is, indeed, a great place.
For now. But soon, Facebook will pivot to wanting revenue from Threads, and so Threads will become great for advertisers and steadily worse for users.
Then once all the advertisers and the users are locked in, Threads will become shitty for everybody but Facebook itself. Enshittification will be complete.
We saw this happen with the Facebook blue app. It happened with Instagram. And it’ll happen with Threads.
Until then, sure, I’ll use Threads. Why not? But I’m not getting settled in.
Dave Winer: We can do better than Threads.
Running from the arms of one billionaire to another is a bad idea.
Musk is the second worst thing that happened to social media, but Facebook is much worse, because they’re so much more competent, but lack any vision other than sucking up as much of the world into their silo as possible and never doing anything that could possibly benefit anyone else.
Ask a Manager: I want my coworker to stop giving me “psychic messages” from my dead family members. The coworker also has messages from dead pets.
Why’d I take speed for twenty years?
Podcaster PJ Vogt writes about his 20-year use of prescription stimulants, as well as coming to terms with the suicide of a friend.
Vogt struggled to understand what his friend’s depression was like from the inside and was surprised to learn his own thinking was a product of depression.
I had been like Ahab hunting for Moby Dick, not realizing the boat he’s on is actually a large whale in a boat costume.