Category: Writing

The Christmas tree was escorted to the curb today, the lingering scent of pine slowly dissipating from my living room. It’s the final shred of acceptance for me of the closing of the season. Christmas these last years has been hard, with all of the loss compounding that feeling of growing up and growing more and more alone. And yet, we continue ever forward, through the approaching year, aimed forward, with another Christmas at its end. We’ve got 344 days to Christmas. Ho ho ho.

Inputs

1: WOOOOOO!!!! Big win out of the Buccaneers, looking the better team in all three phases. Tackled harder, and as a team. Broke through tackles that the Eagles didn’t seem to have the fortitude (or, towards the conclusion, the heart) to make. Even a solid kicking performance!

Overall, a big effort out of the team, repeatedly demonstrating a superior will to win. And now, on to Detroit, in a matchup that would have seemed bizarre for most of the last 30 years. Two long-maligned underdog franchises face off for the right to participate in the NFC Championship game. 2024, continuing to be wild.

2: The big story of the day on social media is this one (NYTimes Gift Article), regarding the use of courtesy cards by people to get out of traffic tickets in New York, and the insane amount of pressure being put on one officer not to go along blindly with an obviously corrupt system of patronage. The whole thing is gobsmacking, but this quote stood out:

“Quotas are officially barred, but Bianchi said he was required to issue six tickets daily.”

Just another example of unofficial official rules that drives me absolutely insane (and something we all suspect to be true, even through the vehement denials such a construction allows for). For an organization ostensibly created to enforce the law (though which it is clear has a different remit entirely), rules that aren’t rules but are enforced with the weight of them is a practice that symbolizes the inherent struggle to exist and to know what is expected vs what is right.

Oh, and the kicker: “Bianchi stopped one teenager about a dozen times; he got so familiar with the family that the kid’s father began sending him holiday greetings. (The kid is now a police officer.)” FFS.

3: Via 404 Media, “Google Search Really Has Gotten Worse, Researchers Find,” which, duh. However! The author goes in depth on a study done in Germany on overall search quality across search engines, including Google’s and finds overall that results at the top-end of search queries are more stuffed with nonsense than before, including this insight: “(W)e find that only a small portion of product reviews on the web uses affiliate marketing, but the majority of all search results do.” Meaning, though the rest of the web is rather normally distributed with affiliate marketers, those reliant on the practice are gaming their way regularly to the top of results, polluting those being shown to organic searchers.

The gaming of search results and “Search Engine Optimization” as a field of study and business have been an issue since the advent of PageRank displaced Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and the dozen other purely collative search engines. As an arms race, consumers are losing, to the point that paid subscription search is beginning to be a viable business model to replace what had been the commoditized compliment of serving ads. Entropy, as always.

Projects In Progress

🤷‍♂️

I went on about it on BlueSky, but one thing I’ve started to get irked by is the complaint from authors of clickbaity articles online that they are not responsible for the titles of the posts their words appear below. While I’m certain that’s true, it’s your name on the thing. If you want someone else to be held to account, point at them, and let them hold specific accountability for their remonstrable actions. Otherwise, your name’s on it, bud. If you don’t agree with it, make that clear and take an actual stand, and not a soft shrug that wants the benefit of the traffic without the blame. Ya can’t have it both ways.

Inputs

1: By the time this publishes, it won’t have happened yet, but I’ll be watching the Buccaneers hosting the Philadelphia Eagles down in Tampa. Do I hold out much hope at their winning? No, no I do not. However! Being a fan is being, by definition, unreasonably supportive of an organization that couldn’t care less about your existence as anything but a paying body, bolstering their bottom line. Fandom continues apace. Go Bucs!

2: I live in Wisconsin, where the entire state is basking in the glow of a blowout victory over the Dallas Cowboys, and will now face the 49ers in California¹Though not in San Francisco, because the stadium is nowhere near the city. next week. It feels like 90’s revivalism, Green Bay and Dallas and San Francisco being the relevant playoff organizations at the end of the season. Here’s hoping for continued success for the Packers, if only for the continued improved moods of my friends and neighbors. When the Packers win, the state is a brighter place to live. The sun shines a little higher in the sky, the beer tastes a little better, the brats snap more tautly, the cheese curds squeak a little sharper. Bang on the drum, and Go Pack Go²Of course, should they and Tampa both win, y’all know which side of the Battle of those Bays I’ll be on.!

3: It is Martin Luther King Jr Day in the US, which is a holiday in remembrance and reverence of the work to recognize and respect the rights of all, and one of the most emblematic figures behind it and out in front of it. I won’t be another white guy to co-opt the day to show my own bonafides or to glom onto an effort by recommending the same things everyone points to today³Other than to remind folks about the Letter from the Birmingham City Jail, written in the margins of a statement from white clergy denigrating the efforts of King and on scraps of paper while a political prisoner, which clearly calls out how safe white “allies” are that in name more than deed, but I would recommend taking at least a few minutes today to read, or watch, or listen to those whose voices keep that effort alive and continue to call attention to our opportunities to create a world ready to accept and include all within it.

Projects In Progress

Diagramming things and determining MVPs, and how to do things with the least amount of effort/long-term cost.

Notes:

• 1
  Though not in San Francisco, because the stadium is nowhere near the city.
• 2
  Of course, should they and Tampa both win, y’all know which side of the Battle of those Bays I’ll be on.
• 3
  Other than to remind folks about the Letter from the Birmingham City Jail, written in the margins of a statement from white clergy denigrating the efforts of King and on scraps of paper while a political prisoner, which clearly calls out how safe white “allies” are that in name more than deed

We’re halfway through the second blizzard of 2024, with about 5-6 inches of snow so far with an estimated accumulation of 10ish for this event, on top of the 8ish from the last one. This Winter took the shit talk personally, and after a brown Christmas and New Year, decided to ring in the changing of the year with enough thick, wet, fluffy snow to turn the world into a frosted wonderland.

Inputs

1: Watched the Friday ep of Pablo Torre Finds Out, with guests Katie Nolan and Dan Soder. It served as a fantastic inside baseball follow-up to her Jeopardy performance earlier in the week, as well as a great recap of the New Year’s Urn drama down in ‘bama.

2: Also watched the Wednesday ep of Pablo Torre Finds Out, in which we learn that Duke all-timer JJ Redick turned down multiple offers to join or outright run coaching staffs for multiple NBA franchises to run his son’s 9-year-old traveling basketball team. An incredibly endearing story about fatherhood, maturity, learning how to lead, and learning the joy of following one’s true values.

I would never have imagined the scrappy Dukie who was easy to loathe in college would turn into someone I immensely respect, not only for his commentary work on his own podcast and on network shows, but as someone who has had to learn how to be the best version of himself, and is sharing that experience with us.

Pablo, I echo so many others in observing, has found an incredible voice on his own show, and these two episodes give a small slice of that larger, laudable whole. You can see, even in his joviality, how much he cares, not just about the topics or the effort of his journalistic instincts, but about the people with whom he spends his hours each week.

3: Via Futurism, a story about Amazon selling products whose sellers have overseen so little that they include labels such as “I’m sorry but I cannot fulfill this request it goes against OpenAl use policy. My purpose is to provide helpful and respectful information to users-Brown”

For a long, long time, Amazon has clearly not given a shit about the quality of products sold via its storefront, happy to be the fulfillment center for whatever from wherever to whomever. It screams out for oversight which seems to echo into the void. And I say this as a (very unsuccessful and to date not-compensated) Amazon “Partner” and as some one who has interviewed for roles at Amazon in the past.

Projects In Progress

No news is news of nothing, I suppose?