2025 January❮❮prevnext❯❯

My 2024 one second (every day) at a time....


Featuring cameos from:
Baxter, Mystic River Geese, Ariana, Liz, Josh, Ron, Melissa, Wren, Chas, John, Rachel, Cathleen, School of Honk, Duane and JP Honk, a Squirrel, The Wilbur, Sophie, Matthew, Jean, The New Magnolia Jazz Band, Anna, Kellie, Courtney, Nat, Kellie and Anna's wedding, Parrots, Cenotes, an Iguana, Carrie, Mary on the Half Shell, teachers at CSI, Wild Turkeys, Dave, My Birthday Party Crew, Leah, The Eclipse, Pigeons, Erica, sQ!, Turtles, Leap of Faith Orchestra, Extinction Rebellion, Rebekah, UUU Sc+Sp, Fenke, Karen, Marsha, Gary, a Bird, Jose, Kayla, Veronica, Max, Maaaahk, Declan, Char, Roberto, the Haley House, Dorchester Food Co-op, Dana, Boston Dyke March, Leftist Marching Band, Don't Stop Believing, Ken and Cousins, Aunt Susan, Mom, Good Trouble, Boston Celtics, MiFi, Keytar bear, Dan, Lynette (Trombone), Dylan, Tom, a Pug, Hamid and Interns, Tim, a Wasp, Amy, a Bee, Aimee, Mike, a Hawk, Sophia, the Bike Bus, Elio, Boston Music Project and Bikes Not Bombs, 11th Hour for Climate Justice, Sea Gulls, Mary, Red Rebel Brigade, The Party Band, Catherine, Cindy, Derek, Tom, Nelson, Storm, Dom, a Halloween Gorilla, Megan, Sam-O, Lynette, Katya, Allandale Farm, Terry, John, Boston Clown March, Asbury Park Salvation Army, Bill, Mary, David, Chinchillas, Swans, Thomas, Danielle, Sue, Ben, Veronica, Times Square, Johnny Favorite photos from this year, mostly taken by me. Most are chosen for visual impact... then extra galleries for people, creatures, and then some other things I found visually cool.

Most years I do a few galleries of a dozen, this year they wanted to be 11.





Media I consumed last year... 4 star in red, 5 star red and bolded...

Last month's "new to me music". "Do You Realize??" was a good recommendation by Lynette... stuff like

Do you realize / That everyone you know someday will die? / And instead of saying all of your goodbyes / Let them know you realize that life goes fast / It's hard to make the good things last" is right up my alley


4 star:
* Do You Realize?? (The Flaming Lips)
* This Is War (Gawne, Atlus & Tech N9ne)
* All Apologies (Sinéad O'Connor)

3 star:
* Wild World (Epic Trailer Version) (Alala)
* The Star Wars Cantina (Mark Jonathan Davis)
* Battle of Who Could Care Less (Ben Folds Five)
* Mass Destruction (Single Version) (Faithless)
* Otonoke (Opening Theme to DAN DA DAN) (Creepy Nuts)
* 'Twas the Night After Christmas (John Jay Martyn)
* Late Night Games (Jack Baker)
* Need a Favor (Jelly Roll)
* Nowhere to Run (The Delegators)
* Dónde Está Santa Claus (2013 Remastered Version) (Augie Rios)
* Baby, It's Cold Outside (from Love Hard) (Love Hard)
* Blue Bayou (Linda Ronstadt)
* Soulful Christmas (James Brown)
* Silver Bells (Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings)

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It is this variety, this diversity of people and views which gives our church its strength.

And over the course of many years in the service of our mother, the church, let me tell you,

there was one sin which I have come to fear above all others.

Certainty.

Certainty is the great enemy of unity.

Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.

Even Christ was not certain at the end.

People so crave certainty that all kinds of wildly incompatible faiths have emerged. The certainty I see is this: that I will muddle through whatever comes. This lets me be much more tolerant.

Murphy's Laws of Combat

1. If the enemy is in range, so are you.

2. Incoming fire has the right of way.

3. Don't look conspicuous, it draws fire.

4. There is always a way.

5. The easy way is always mined.

6. Try to look unimportant, they may be low on ammo.

7. Professionals are predictable, it's the amateurs that are
dangerous.

8. The enemy invariably attacks on two occasions:

a. When you're ready for them.
b. When you're not ready for them.

9. Teamwork is essential, it gives them someone else to shoot at.

10. If you can't remember, the claymore is pointed at you.

11. The enemy diversion you have been ignoring will be the main
attack.

12. A "sucking chest wound" is natures way of telling you to slow
down.

13. If your attack is going well, you have walked into an ambush.

14. Never draw fire, it irritates everyone around you.

15. Anything you do can get you shot, including nothing.

16. Make it tough enough for the enemy to get in and you won't be
able to get out.

17. Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than yourself.

18. If you are short of everything but the enemy, you are in a
combat zone.

19. When you have secured an area, don't forget to tell the enemy.

20. Never forget that your weapon is made by the lowest bidder.

21. Friendly Fire Isn't.

I can't think of much more stressful than being in combat. One thing about AIs... they don't push back when you ask for more, more, MORE!!!! Dang with a new job I'm definitely gonna have to start changing my shirt every day.

Some cool maps from pleated-jeans

The time thing is bugging me. It seems like 10, 15 minutes just slips by more easily and it's tougher to get more done in an hour.

There are many things I would like you to be. Normal is not one of them.

(I think in contrast to Melissa kind of liking that I sometimes watched sports.)

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I'd never fuck a guy in QA again.

"Are You Enjoying This App? Please Rate It:" is such a self-defeating question...since I never enjoy rating an app, the answer at the moment of being asked is always "No"

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The movie "Heretic" (Oscar bait for Hugh Grant, despite being a bit of a gory horror film) was really good. Didn't quite stick the final third, and while not impeccable, the views about the history of religion in the first part were a lot smarter than nearly any mainstream film I've seen. I grabbed the book NFL Player AJ Brown was reading on the sidelines, "Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life," by Jim Murphy. Despite the cheesy title it seems inline with some of my ways of thinking. Even if all I'm looking for is a way to tackle the work day with more direct approaches and less backing off.

(Also I still like the Friday Night Lights motto "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose")

I'd change Schrodinger's Law to you won't know WHAT will go wrong til it does... still very clever "There's so much stuff that matters, but so little of it matters to my well-being!"

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RIP David Lynch

(via Boston Globe) nomen est omen

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Stomp is more interesting to me... because they're not blue.

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Don't delude yourself. It's Idi Amin level corruption

presidents use to try to avoid even risking appearing corrupt with their finances.

Stay Busy. Be Useful

This might be a good life mantra.

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You know what's a fun game? Take 3 Excedrin PM's and see if you can whack off before you fall asleep. You always win, that's the best part about the game.

Crime might be legal now, if you are a vocal enough supporter of Donald Trump, and the financial and crypto industries are rushing to support him.

He talks about a number of things, including some insight into the Trump memecoin. I graduated in 1996. I just ran an inflation calculator on my starting salary and found out everything is almost EXACTLY TWICE as expensive now, in 2025 - $5K then is $10K now. Fuck Trump, man. Between garbage like "Trump defunds cancer research", "Trump questions FEMA" - at best it's Homer Simpson's campaign slogan "Can't Someone Else Do It?" - the someone meaning, usually, the states (or some libertarian fantasy of the market stepping up, maybe someone can fix shit AND make a profit!) but newsflash dumbass, cancer and disaster area level emergencies are big enough to need a national response.

And that's at best - at worst Trump the jackass in "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one" Even if there are parts of NIH or FEMA you think are somehow somewhat wasteful, it's not like Trump has ANY serious plan to do something better, because he's not a serious person. (Remember his idea for health? "Concepts of a plan"?) Musk has done interesting things because of "move fast and break things" but this is shit I don't see him moving fast to replace what he is breaking.

Hope you don't get a kid with cancer or get hit by a flood or fire over the next few years. (I mean I'd hope that anyway, but now you're more on your own than ever.)

Somehow this feels less like Trump's promised "Golden Age" and more like a "Golden Showers Age". Enjoy the reign and the rain.

"He conducted and reviewed more than six hundred interviews with POWs and concluded that * the psychology of Nazis, as disclosed by detailed individual investigation of large numbers of them and sub-sequent statistical validation, fails to show gross mental disorder. It is characterised by an unconscious over-emphasis of paternal authority. evasion of responsibility by blaming scape-goats, over-valuation of masculinity, and depreciation of feminine and tender influences."

"Ukraine is full of advertisers and hackers, activists and journalists who after the start of invasion formed their own improvised civic political warfare executives. They buy ads on Russian porn sites and bootleg movie portals, then target them with videos about Russian war crimes the economic problems their government has caused them, and advice to soldiers on how to surrender. They hack into Russian TV channels and play clips of messages from President Zelensky. They quickly found that "moral" content didn't take off. What was more successful were issues that touched on Russians' immediate self-interests, the Russian pigdog. To give one small example: When Ukrainian activists tried mass telephone calls to Russians, they found that some 80 percent would hang up during the first twenty seconds if the calls were about the devastation caused by the war, but only 30 percent hung up when the call focused on their personal interests, such as a special tax they had to pay to support Russia's newly occupied lands. When the call was about help to Russian veterans, 43 percent hung up, but only 25 percent hung up when the call was about travel limitations caused by the war. As in World War II, such information efforts can be only as effective as the military operation."

"In summer 2023, there is a media scandal in America. News Corp the owner of Fox News, has been forced to pay $784 million for spread ing conspiracy theories stating that the 2020 US election was stoler by the company that ran the vote- counting machines in some states This, the network claimed rigged the results in favor of the candidate conspiracy theory that about third of from the Democratic Party, a Americans, and the majority of Republican voters, believe. During the trial it transpired that the network's presenters and senior management all knew that they were telling lies, but continued telling them because these were the stories their audience desired. Even if Fox stops transmitting this particular lie, the fear is that new networks will pop up to feed similar conspiracies to audiences that want an escape from reality, like those Arendt once described, who desire a remedy for loneliness no less than Ellul's lonely crowds. How does a system that relies on trust in common processes such as elections thrive, or even survive, when so many deny their validity? We need a way to reach these audiences, or at least some of them, for democracy to function. For that we need to understand their motivations. Is claiming the election was "rigged" a case of misinter preting facts, or about showing off your loyalty to a political identity? Is it a badge of belonging I so, how can one start to unpick those bonds?"

Although I'm in the early stages of a new and rewarding relationship, for some reason yesterday in a private chat I went on a binge of digging up old exchanges of me and Amber, here are a few that really stick out for me...

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What's funnier than a miffed boyfriend? A boyfriend that says that he's 'miffed'.

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"[apple crunch]"
"Isn't it hard to eat lying down?"
"Nah Romans did it."
"That's not a good reason. And why did you have that answer ready so quickly?"

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You got keys and money? Good, 'cause I got nothin'. Except you. Which is good, 'cause you got the keys and money.

(Such a strongly lowkey romantic sentiment!)

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"I don't like your lesbian music."
"Ani Difranco isn't a lesbian."
"You don't have to be a lesbian to make lesbian music."
"..."
"Am I right? Am I right? Don't tweet that."

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That's the weirdest proclivity that you have. That I know about.

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"Wow, 50 people are missing in an Italian cruise accident."
"Yeah, sounds horrendous, like a real life Titanic."
"...Titanic was real life."
"..."

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Amber, firing up laptop: "Let's see if Facebook is more interesting in 2012!"

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"Man, if I were president I would totally push to make Kindereggs legal in this country."
"That's... only one reason you're not president."

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Don't not eat crumbs off your shirt on my account, buddy.

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[about fake online dating scammers]
"'Cause of all your cyberstalking... you KNEW I really was that good"
"Oh honey- scammers don't pretend to be 30-something programmers working from home in an apartment in their aunt and uncle's house."

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"Want help with that?"
"Nah, I'm like 85% done."
"That's when it's best to offer- you taught me that."
"Hey, not on purpose!"

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*achoo* I'm allergic to season finales.

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[Cleaning out apartment stuff]
"Yeah, I think this heavy duty candle was part of a pack of 'Y2K surviving' stuff Mo's dad gave us..."
"Well, it worked.."

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[Reading] "How much sex you do you think is had in the Olympic Village? My guess: A lot."
"...I think I hear that every Olympics."
"Hm, yeah. And maybe it's more, you know, after the events, they don't want to sex away their game."
"Well I don't think you can sex away, like, 'Curling'"

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Ooh they're BRAND-NAME Advil... wow....

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"It only looks big 'cause it's way up there..."
"That's what SHE said!"
"...that wasn't a very good one."
"...that-- is also what she said."

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You're so humble.... I mean, for someone so full of himself, you are humble.

"To steal from As Good As It Gets: 'You make me want to be a better man.'"
"I can't imagine you getting any better."
"...ahahahahaha..thanks, I think"
"Oops! No I mean I should have said
you're already the best'"

"The second issue is the process described by the memo is illegal. Once Congress passes a law that includes a financial assistance program and the president signs the law, the executive branch must execute the law. There is no exception to this rule for programs that allegedly support Marxism, transgenderism, or the Green New Deal. If Trump opposes any financial assistance program that Congress has previously funded, the legal course of action is to convince Congress to rescind the funding."

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30,000 person concentration camps, cool, cool.

via

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