I can’t believe how far some of my friends came to watch our first show, which was meant to be a low stakes thing away from home. It was a blast to be on stage again after almost 20 years. I should have asked to have vocals and keys in the monitor up front, but oh well. Also, my old Dunlop pedal tuner is a piece of shit that was tracking terrible so I was not able to correct some tuning issues probably only I noticed.

Very successful first run out.

I really dislike how some apps just don’t make it across the ecosystem. Why can’t I view my Health data easily on my Mac?

My band has its first show tonight. It’s been almost exactly 20 years since I was last on a stage with my guitar.

I have the most ridiculous and excellent friends.

This is a Naomi Wolf-esque desire to be worshiped by someone, anyone. And if the people you originally aligned with are always pushing you to be better by challenging you, fuck them, you’ll align with the crooks and conmen and sociopaths.

– danah boyd The Ministry of Empowerment

I am not out in the world working so much. Today, I met up with a few folks locally at a food hall to co-work. I’ve been on and off Zoom meetings all day, writing code, doing my job, and after 7 hours of work I still have 29% battery life. Apple laptops are really incredible.

I guess I’m supposed to be proud or something that I’m doing my civic duty, but I couldn’t be less excited about jury duty tomorrow.

I don’t really think it makes sense to celebrate the peaceful transfer of power as upholding democracy. Upholding democracy required Trump’s impeachment four years ago. Without our mechanisms of accountability, the system has already fallen.

I am devastated that so much of the progress that has been made during my life time we’re now reversing. I can’t believe how much more cruel America is than it was ten years ago.

I put back on S2E1 of Shrinking to watch with a friend and I forgot just how far things progressed this season. Makes me even more convinced it was an all timer.

I haven’t seen a personal website that really inspired me in a little while. Share your favorites!

I realized this morning that our new home EV charger had a little WiFi symbol on it. It doesn’t feel crazy to add that as a new device, even though my car app can tell me about charging state it’s kind of slow.

So I registered and added my charger, and now I’m getting 3x faster charging at home.

Turns out, you need to configure the amperage of the circuit for the charger to take advantage of it. Because I did things properly and spent far too much money to have an electrician install the charger on a dedicated circuit to spec, this made a huge difference.

I was moderately happy with the previous charging speed– I could go from 20% to 90% in about 12 hours. I’m ecstatic with the new rate, which will let me more properly take advantage of cheap electric rate timings to keep costs low.

Overall, I have to charge so infrequently it’s not that big a deal.

It’s the end/beginning of the year, so there’s been a lot of “cleaning out” and “cleaning up” going on in my life. The crap is never ending though. Today, I’m seriously considering declaring bankruptcy on podcasts.

So my friend has basically convinced me that I either want to go very basic and get a Bambu Lab A1 mini and see if I like it, or go all the way and get a Prusa CORE One. Decisions. 💸

I just put on a Vision Pro for the first time, and even with every conversation I’ve heard about it, I came away pretty impressed.

I continue to think these anti-pornography laws are backwards, puritanical, and hopefully, unconstitutional. But I also continue to believe that we should have operating system-level age verification and standard browser APIs for accessing that data.

The most ridiculous things about banning books in school based on “development appropriateness”:

1. There is no universal “development appropriateness”.
2. When kids find and are interested in something, it is almost definitionally “developmentally appropriate”.

“Developmentally inappropriate” is largely a term used to mean, “A topic that a child brings to an adult that they feel uncomfortable talking about with a child of that age.”

Most exposures to content that somehow becomes traumatic is only much more so when the world signals to a child that they should never talk to an adult about what they saw and how it made them feel because they were wrong to have come across it in the first place.

I was “exposed” to so many ideas my parents probably didn’t want me to talk about as a voracious young reader. It was fine– largely because I only was “exposed” because I was ready. The ability to read complex books, and interest in them, coincides with the ability to handle complex ideas. If I wasn’t mentally or emotionally prepared to take on those ideas, I would never have been able to or desire reading those books. And my “exposure” path to new books was through every channel you’d expect– what other people who liked books I had already read recommended. I was following well-trodden paths through recommendations that make sense for people like me. My age was immaterial– I was moving through a standard progression, just younger than many other people.

Books aren’t banned because of any (unproven) negative impact they’ve ever had on children. Books are banned because of scared adults.

I didn’t realize that Joe Rogan world was pissed about Kylie Kelce (of couse they are). I almost want to subscribe to her podcast now just to fuck with the “manoverse” shit heads.

I am not ok with how fucking cold it feels outside right now.

This Elephant Gym performance on KEXP is so great.

I am rewatching Rogue One. For a moment, I was doubting whether I liked it quite as much as I remembered. I think this is only my third watch— once in theaters, once at home when it was first available.

There’s a moment an hour and twenty minutes in when Bail Organa tells Mon Mothma that he will send for his friend the jedi, turns off, and in the background says, “Captain Antilles, I have a mission for you.”

And for whatever reason in this moment, I felt that feeling in my throat. I felt a small set of tears begin to form. Because at this moment, the die is cast. Jyn and Cassian are on their way to Scarif, and this one moment begins what I know is the march toward tragedy, and hope. And after all of this time, it still wallops me.

So yeah, I think Rogue One is a pretty good movie.

Finally finished What We Do in the Shadows. Delightful and fitting finale.

Shōgun is as good as everyone said. Also, having just finished, I see that there’s an English dub and I … do not like that.

I need a limit of 2 iMessage fireworks for Happy New Year.

Skeleton Crew continues to be a delight.