January 2025

Dear Canada, thank you for Letterkenny, Shoresy and Schitt’s Creek. And sorry about our president. He’s a real nutsack.

I have exchanged waiting on hold for the void with listening to the new Mogwai album at a nice “drown out the airport” volume. It’ll do.

Also, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is a fine book.

“Your scream is very important to us, but all voids are currently busy with other screams. Please stay on the line or try screaming later.”

So much screaming to do, so few readily available voids.

Bad people win races when good people don't run. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but it's probably going to involve focusing locally on local and regional races. Not sure I'm ready to run for office, but ... I might be.

I am an Ally.
There are many of us out there.
Please don't lose heart. There are many who will fight for you and stand by you.
#lgbttq #ally

It is no longer reasonable to assume life will remain peaceful, plentiful, reliable for those of us lucky enough to have lived our lives in privilege to this point. That doesn’t mean we have to change who we are or how we get our joy. It means we need to lean harder into that joy and mutual support every chance we get.
This is the uncertain world; create and seize kindness, dignity, and other soul-fuel at all opportunities.

###

fuck’s sake you’re gonna make me say it again

IF YOU

DEADNAME AND MISGENDER

A TRANS PERSON YOU DON’T LIKE
(even a gas station hot dog like Caitlyn Jenner)

YOU ARE SHOWING EVERY TRANS PERSON YOUR SUPPORT OF US IS CONDITIONAL ON YOUR APPROVAL OF US

fuckin’ knock it off ya dinguses

Resigning in the age of LLMs.

2023: you type a polite resignation letter into your email client and click send.

2024: you type “polite resignation letter” into an LLM. Paste the output into your email client and click send.

2025: you type “resignation letter” into your email client. Click “polite”, click send. Recipient’s email client summaries the letter back to “polite resignation letter.”

2026: you type “polite resignation letter” into your email client. Click send. Your sentiment is sent directly without first being inflated by, or recompressed by an LLM. We simply communicate in prompts.

“Goodbye, jovial, dystopian.”

Welcome to "maple syrup in your coffee" season! This greeting is late, because you can do this any time you want to, but I just want to promote this idea because it's stupid delicious. Enjoy! 🍁

I can't believe they named it FireOS when BezOS was right there

If you'd like some fuzzy shoegaze guitars with your old west brutality, the American Primeval soundtrack by Explosions in the Sky is GREAT: https://open.spotify.com/album/0N1aDLJfHd3s78yZINQAqH?si=oJVQ_-bNRSWAirlAuhk4BA

It used to be that when a guy had a midlife crisis, the most he could screw up was his own family. Billionaire midlife crises are a whole other thing. You could end up buying a presidency, destroying 20 years of good faith in your product or causing a genocide.

If I had to pick what kind of ear infection to get, it wouldn't be an inner one. The vertigo is merciless. Give me hot painful otitis media any day.

Currently rocking out to Nigel Kennedy's version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons because... I'm sick, and that's all the rocking out I can handle at the moment: https://open.spotify.com/album/7nXsdgfAlJjRBBP6J0ehw2?si=iGp5NpAhTnaJmNgmVdL08w

Well, found my new favorite follow. Thanks, @koalie!
https://mastodon.social/@aurora_webcam_bot/113772567316767476

I'm actually happy to be back at work. This feels like a good sign.

It's a shiny new blog post called: A Quick 2024 Retrospective of Good Things

https://lawver.net/2025/01/a-quick-2024-retrospective-of-good-things/

#Kevin #2024 #books #music #retrospective

First day back to work since 12/18, made it through e-mail in almost no time. Slack took over an hour. Also declared feed bankruptcy and just marked everything read.

Happy 2025, y'all!