Category: Daily Journal

It’s a weird day. I got some good news that I won’t share quite yet, out of an abundance of superstition. It’s also my late father’s birthday, which leads to a weird basket of emotions. On both accounts, I went out and got a beer.¹Thus the relative lateness of today’s post.

Inputs

1: Started in on Deb Chachra’s How Infrastructure Works at the bar. So far, it carries the same authorial voice I’ve known her writing for. Looking forward to getting deeper into the weeds, but I already caught some fun insights about things like cadastral maps.

2: Got back, kicked up my feet, rewatched The Martian, which is such a great book and film adaptation of the same. The logical, scientific approach to problem solving is gratifying to see given wide exposure, both as a general encouragement of such approaches as well as to act as a new introduction to exploration and science for generations that need that kick in the pants.

3: Finally, went and did a little space exploration of my own in Elite: Dangerous. Nothing like flying around the galaxy to take the edge off more planetary concerns.

Notes:

• 1
  Thus the relative lateness of today’s post.

We’re finally at the breaking point of the cold front hovering over my house, and with more reasonable temperatures on the horizon, my mind starts unthawing a bit. People run from this cold, flee to deserts, to beaches, to far-flung locales to not brace themselves amid the bone deep nature of nature. I’ve lived in those places, and missed this. There’s something about a harsh Winter that makes life feel lived, time feel transitory and not a still forever of nothing. time is visible here, countable in the changing of moments into hours, into days, into months. Seasons have width, breadth, breath to them. To freeze is to know there is a thaw coming, a Spring beyond the wall of grey, glowing blue and green just over the horizon.

Inputs

1: When China, in its evolution of itself after Deng Xiaoping’s efforts to alter course, was looking to learn about America, it sent a young student to study the country and report back. Where did they send him to learn about the beating heart of America? Where did they seek the soul, the essence of an entire nation? Iowa City, Iowa.¹I’m already imagining the Shutdown Fullcast bit about China learning everything it knows about America from the 1988 Iowa Hawkeyes

To imagine what could have been if they had picked any number of other places. A China that learned about America from Miami would have been an interesting time to live in.

2: Pablo Torre had Roy Wood Jr on to talk about how the hosting of awards shows works, the issues recent hosts have run into, and the why behind the how. Really interesting inside baseball stuff, down to joke selection and timing and knowing one’s audience.

Also, Roy and I are seemingly incredibly similar thinkers in that, we’re both very deliberate and also ephemeral as hell, with very open hearts to the bountiful variety life holds and the potential of our places within it.

3: Sports Illustrated is essentially dead today. Private equity is the worst thing we allow to happen in America. The argument that they’re clearing out the chaff of unprofitable companies belies an insistence that the only reason for anything to exist is to bring a larger than average profit percentage to a very small percentage of the nation. It’s a belief system that needs more public and fervent shame sloughed on its adherents, but won’t, because people are so easily bought off, on the one axis along which their interests converge: money.

Eat the rich.²I mean, they’re stuffing themselves full of the highest quality feed, it’s like they’re preparing themselves for consumption already.

Projects In Progress

Man, who in the hell knows anymore. This section has been less about progress or reporting of statuses and more about finding a new way to shrug in print each day. Let’s see if it returns next week, or if it’s cleaved for its own good.³I am aware of the ironic rhyming of the previous against #3 above. Different instincts entirely, but I am aware.

Notes:

• 1
  I’m already imagining the Shutdown Fullcast bit about China learning everything it knows about America from the 1988 Iowa Hawkeyes
• 2
  I mean, they’re stuffing themselves full of the highest quality feed, it’s like they’re preparing themselves for consumption already.
• 3
  I am aware of the ironic rhyming of the previous against #3 above. Different instincts entirely, but I am aware.

I had an interview cancelled this morning, mere hours before it was scheduled, because they offered the role to someone else. I don’t know what kind of operation this group was running, but it’s another of those examples of how corporate recruiting treats those looking for work, and makes one wonder how they’re thinking the impression they create among interested parties will be carried long-term. They’re certainly not creating promoters through that sort of effort.

Anyhow, that’s the extent of my venting on the matter. Best of luck to them in their continued blah blah blah. I was very happy to attend the other interview I scheduled for the day, which went pretty well if I do say so myself.¹Ed note: I mean, it’s your blog bud. Of course you say so.

Also, in my grumbling afterwards, I noticed a typo on my resume. Son of a…

Inputs

1: An example of my general theory of tech incompetence when it comes to areas outside their physical presences: electric cars aren’t getting the range their owners expect in the cold.

This feeds into my general belief that large tech companies, who don’t, as a group, have headquarters located in the upper Midwest (where it gets, y’know, cold) have massive blindspots in the implementations of their technology. The one that always comes to mind for me is the Apple Weather app which regularly displays zero degrees as -0º, and has nonsensical snowfall totals every time it snows.

These aren’t things one notices in the Valley in CA or in Austin, TX, or Virginia, or Raleigh, but would be very evident to their engineers and product managers if they actually used their products in the variety of conditions afforded by a Chicago or a Milwaukee or a Minneapolis.

2: Today on Pablo Torre Finds Out, we learn about the Stanley phenomenon (yes, the brand that made the camping cookware buried in the storage tub in your garage) and how women selling to women stoked this entire trend. Plus a whole threadline on “Who was the Pop-Tart” which, if that means nothing to you, will mean something to you after watching Sarah Spain’s investigative reporting.

3: In a depressing follow-up to Tuesday’s grumbling about the declining quality of Google searches, “Google News Is Boosting Garbage AI-Generated Articles,” from, again, 404 Media. Which, of course they are. First they broke local news, now they’re going to break the entirety of news by replacing it with AI-generated bullshit en masse to avoid paying their means of production. Late capitalism isn’t late enough, friends.

Projects In Progress

(I should note here that I pre-write a lot of these early in the day, so I’m guessing at my progress most of the time.) Good, I guess? Futzing around with hosting and frameworks and stuff.

Notes:

• 1
  Ed note: I mean, it’s your blog bud. Of course you say so.