2025 June❮❮prev

YCombinator on The 'white-collar bloodbath' is all part of the AI hype machine. As much as AI is messing with things, the Zero Interest Rate Policy hangover, and the Section 174 tax thing especially for tech, and general bandwagon bs is probably as much as fault for the crapfest we're swimming in.

You are lucky to be here. You were incalculably lucky to be born, and incredibly lucky to be brought up by a nice family that helped you get educated and encouraged you to go to Uni. Or if you were born into a horrible family, that's unlucky and you have my sympathy... but you were still lucky: lucky that you happened to be made of the sort of DNA that made the sort of brain which – when placed in a horrible childhood environment – would make decisions that meant you ended up, eventually, graduating Uni. Well done you, for dragging yourself up by the shoelaces, but you were lucky. You didn't create the bit of you that dragged you up. They're not even your shoelaces.

Anemic month for new music. Just kind of a new techno remix of a raunchy Nate Dogg song...

4 star:
* Shake That (Danimal & Sonny Wern)

3 star:
* Wap (Medieval Version) (Bardcore)
* Black Socks (Bill Harley)
* Bahamut (Hazmat Modine)
* Pig Meat Papa (Lead Belly)
* Root to This (Fear of Pop)
* Slow Like Honey (Fiona Apple)
* Jambalaya (On the Bayou) (Fats Domino) Life with vibrators I, Saruman, Have Ended My Alliance with the Dark Lord Sauron scenes from School of Honk 10th Anniversary Gala RIP Roxana Bentes de Moura - friend of JP Honk, Bandmate in SoH, and Partner in Joy with my stalwart BABAM buddy Tom Mason... Yeah. marines and national guard troops, against the states wishes, to quell a non-riot are a bad sign. Can't wait to see what excuses get ginned up at midterms. Like my Friend said...Oh Boston Never Change

(also, perfect comic timing)

Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he will begin "winding down" FEMA after this year's Hurricane season and, perhaps the more significant statement, that he will begin distributing disaster aid directly from the President's office. In other words, disaster assistance will be the President's personal gift, an assist for friends and those who display loyalty. It's part of the broader pattern we can see across the horizon: Trump takes the policing and military powers of the United States and the national tax revenues (drawn disproportionately from the blue states) and uses it to make war on states he considers enemies.

Twenty years ago I wrote:

Computer Stew is a really interesting, really fun web experiment. Basically, some guys decided to see that if they could make a daily show with less than $3000 in startup costs, using the Net for distribution and consumer grade hardware. The short answer is, yup, they can, and the result is sometimes funny as heck. If you only have time to see one episode, check out notepad.exe, in all-singing all-dancing music video tribute to everyone's favorite Windows text editor. "N to the O to the T to the E, P to the A, D, E, X, E my Notepad!"

(I love how one of the characters was always a voice over a speakerphone)

So that song has stuck with me for decades. I saved the crappy realmedia file for the video - I don't have anything to view it anymore, but I tried converting it to mp4....

the quality is SUPER bad but I'm not sure if that's the conversion or just what we had way back in those pre-youtube days.

notepad video_cs117.mp4

Isn't one of the hallmarks of fascism that blend of strong central figure government with militarism and corporate / industrial control? Asking for a friend.

A brilliant rerun I iroincally found while sort of procrastinating

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Happy Fathers Day to those who celebrate!

I had a new introspective thought yesterday- it doesn't have the vibe of "oh my gosh this explains everything" but it seems like it might be a valid piece. I lost my dad when I was 14 after me and my mom being there for him through a year or two of debilitation. (Which is obviously kinda traumatic, though sometimes I think back to how some evaluation I had done around second grade noted I was more attached to my mom than my dad.)

But now for the first time I wonder, did witnessing that reshape my landscape about my own potential for fatherhood, and explain why something like Uncle-hood works so much better for me? Like somehow I either took in "dads get sick and die" or maybe "dads aren't necessary".

I dunno. Maybe it's a just a Just-So story. But I wonder.

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