The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Good:
– Dogs: Just want to take a moment to appreciate my girl Tiger Lilly. She’s my second doggo. My first, Tinkerbelle, was truly a life saver. Before I got Tink I was wayward and depressed and stuck in my own shit; my job sucked, my self esteem was low, and my sense of purpose was wobbling like a fighter whose chin had been dinged. I had opted not to have children for a number of reasons (see my Aug 2024 newsletter for the full deets on that), but, in so doing, I missed out on one of the clear benefits of having offspring—being beholden to the care of others and thus being less of a self-obsessed child. Dogs, to be clear, are not the same level of responsibility as human children. But being the primary caregiver for another being is good for the soul. Dogs do have their benefits – they are cheaper than children, they don’t talk back, and they never grow up and abandon you. Instead they die on you—hahahaha—it’s brutal. What I had with Tinkerbelle was special; she truly needed me and I truly needed her and we had one of those deep bonds that seem cosmically scripted. Losing her was hard, though walking her through that last door was a blessing and gift.
After Tink, I fostered Jefferey who was a bundle of nerves and anxieties and really needed help. Working with a dog trainer named Neal, I helped Jefferey overcome some of his worst behaviors and successfully adopted him out to my cousin who lives in Marin. He’s still a work in progress – his trauma runs deep – but he’s a sweet hearted boy who’s trying his best and he’s in good hands.
Then I got Tiger Lilly. And while I loved her from day one and she really is easy to love, I didn’t have that same soulful feeling with her that I did with Tink. She’s a different kind of girl, a bit less complicated, a bit more needy in a mildly cloying manner. Sweet as the day is long, but simple - food, fetch, and cuddles is the majority of her vocabulary. I’ve had her a year and a half now though and I’m starting to recognize her depths and appreciate her simplicity. We’re very bonded; she likes to be in contact with me as much as possible and I mostly reciprocate. She wants to be a really good girl and she is a really good girl and I’m so grateful to have her in my life.
– Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning: Saw this utterly fun and incredibly dumb movie last night with my cousin; if you’re looking for a big budget, popcorn thriller I recommend it. I do have a complicated relationship with Tom Cruise however. His preeminence in the Scientology cult is highly problematic. The higher ups in that organization (and I hope they’re not listening) do some really nefarious and cruel things to people and they seem to largely function outside of our judicial system. They are scary, feral, and fiendish. And Tom is their golden calf. But he is also a mesmerizing performer, in part because he’s actually a talented actor (Color of Money, Magnolia, Edge of Tomorrow, Born on Fourth of July) but also because he believes his own mythos and thinks he’s cosmically amazing and so he’s very easy to laugh at. The man projects zero irony which is equally entrancing and hilarious. During the flick last night I spent half my time feeling edge-of-my-seat thrill-ride tension and half of my time giggling at Tom Cruise’s Tom Cruisey-ness. I had a blast.
– Gig: I may have landed some work. Not full time, but a good opportunity. Fingers crossed. Probably screwing myself by even mentioning it, but it feels good to talk to folk who seem to recognized my ability to help and show a willingness to accept it.
The Bad:
– Surveillance or Serendipity: Riddle me this Batfolk – On Monday I headed over to Haight street to celebrate a few birthdays with friends. I passed a box of books on my way back; I rifled through it as I’m wont to do with any selection of free books that come my way and pulled out a Terry Pratchett Discworld book entitled Feet of Clay. (If you’re not a Pratchett fan, but do enjoy fantasy and satire, then you are probably be a Pratchett fan, you just don’t know it yet.)
So I brought the book home and started reading it Wednesday night. Now, it’s important to understand a few things for context.
1. I live alone and so only speak aloud at home when a) i’m on the phone, b) I’m conversing with my dog or c) when I come home from a night out with a drink or two under my belt and I jauntily converse back and forth with myself because I’m hilarious. All to say, I don’t speak out loud at home very often.
2. I do not have an Alexa or any other IOT devices and Siri is deactivated on my phone and laptop. I don’t truck in letting tech listen in because I’m not merely a data generator, I am a human being.
3. My YouTube feed is almost entirely comedy, politics, religious debate, home improvement, and music reactions.
4. There are a total of 41 Discworld novels.
Okay, so on Thursday I open up YouTube on my laptop and there in the recommended videos feed is the audiobook for Feet of Clay. I haven’t written the title anywhere online. I haven’t spoken the title aloud. I haven’t photographed it. I didn’t buy it with a credit card. I am the only sentient being in the universe that knows that book ended up in my house. So I ask you, dear readers, how the fuck did the YouTube algorithm decide to recommend this book to me? What am I missing? Please…please…please let me know. I have submitted the questions to the Search Engine podcast in case my own community of sleuths can’t help.
– Minimalist Internet: I’m looking for recommendations y’all. I’ve realized that my Internet has become really quite very small. I have my bookmarks in my browser and I rarely explore beyond them. That means I’m basically getting all my info from NY Times, YouTube, Imgur, The Daily Beast, and Reddit. And Google still (occassionally DuckDuckGo depending on what I’m searching for). But we all know Google Search has become a husk of its former self and honestly I just don’t know what I’m missing. If you have any recommendations for websites worth visiting on the regular please let me know – either in comments below or via email. I need to break out of my self-installed silo.
– Slippery Slope: I don’t read the Op-Ed as avidly as I once did. I suppose I’m getting my strident takes from other sources these days (mostly talking to my dad and brother). But when people who have personally witnessed the seemingly relentless gravity of autocracy start recognizing a certain tug on their guts, then it’s time to listen.
Here’s my question: The American right has dissociative identity disorder. On the one hand, it gets all sexed up about hyper masculine authority figures steamrolling problems with grit and violence; it loves its strong men. On the other hand, it worships individual liberty, distrusts powerful centralized government, and revels in conspiracies about who’s actually pulling the strings (either Jews or communists, but most likely communist Jews). The question before us today is whether the radical right will recognize the anti-liberty bent of its own authoritarian regime. Perhaps the Big Beautiful Bill, with its oligarchic aftertaste, will wake folk up. As to the left - find a fucking message of inclusivity that taps the emotions of struggling cis het white folk (they are legion) or watch your freedoms burn.
The Ugly:
– Communications Breakdown: My block is a classic Western Addition San Francisco street. Apartment buildings sit at either corner and in between is a long row of Edwardian duplexes. In the two buildings just to my north, there’s a college writing instructor and a technical writing editor. Then me, a business communications writer. The college instructor quit her job (in part) because of ChatGPT; she couldn’t evaluate student generated writing from AI generated writing. The editor’s company is trying to trim his department by more than 50% through the installation of AI. And I’ve struggled to find work after my job was offshored and AI-enhanced. We are all of us north of 45 years of age. We are all of us facing redundancy for the skills we’ve honed in our professional careers. Meanwhile, I recently read that the unemployment rate for new college grads is on the rise as AI is doing much of the entry level work that people new to the job market were once tasked with. I’m still befuddled by the tech sector’s faith that displacing people from access to middle class incomes will somehow be good for them. As they save money on labor costs, they lose their customer base. It’s feeling a bit bleak to me as, when paired with Trump’s decimation of global free trade (which to be sure had its ugly downsides), the threat of higher prices coupled with fewer jobs seems a recipe for a legit depression. We’ll see. We’ll see. Boy howdy will we see.
– Big Beautiful AI: So far, from what I’ve seen, the Trump/Republican budget bill is getting press for its cuts to medicare/medicaid, its kickbacks to the richest among us and increased burden on the poorest among us and the projection that it will increase our debt burden. What I haven’t heard much about is that it includes a provision to ban states from enacting consumer protection regulations on AI. That’s right folks, it allows big tech to run rampant while disabling our local legislatures from doing anything about it. Proponents argue this is to give our AI industry a leg up in the international arms race towards AI supremacy. Sadly, China’s DeepSeek may have already made that question moot. Regardless, selling people out for unregulated corporate power is NOT what a populist president should be doing. The fuckery is as unfucking beleivable as it is expected.
Internet of the Day:
Quote of the Week:
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.”
– Thomas Pynchon
Finally:
Hey! Hi! Excited to hear about your gig -- fingers crossed, if you need/want them to be crossed for you. Other things:
-I believe the _prequel_ to MI: Final Reckoning is FAR superior; did you see it recently? WAY more stunts, and far fewer looooooong talks on boring submarines. Still, I enjoy Tom movies.
-Dogs are great. CATS ARE TOO! Plus I recently had to kill a baby scorpion that showed up in my office so that's a thing.
-Did you speak to anyone about Discworld at the birthday parties you attended Wednesday night? Perhaps other survelliance devices heard & recognized you, and reported your reading choice to your home network through email, or something. Otherwise, I think the devices pick up on private thoughts sent through the ether and there's nothing we can do about it (yet).