D&F 4/29/23

Good morning, race fans! If you watched Drive to Survive and decided to check out Formula 1 racing, then this weekend will be exciting and deeply confusing. In an effort to remind everyone that all rules are just made up the powers that run Formula 1 (the FIA) decided to add a separate, bizarre race to an already packed weekend. I’ve watched F1 for over 15 years, and watching Saturday’s events currently, I still don’t get it.

If you’re not into cars, but are online, you’ve probably read about Bluesky, the current darling-of-the-hour for tech journalists and shitposters. All you really need to know about it is it’s mostly just like Twitter, but it isn’t owned by a South African billionaire man child.

Links

• The nerds are dead, long live the nerds. This article got posted to Today in Tabs, and I linked to it in the Garbage Day discord, where it was met with hostility and anger. I think it was written in a very tongue-in-cheek way, but found myself nodding at least about the prevalence of “I know him!” nerd fan service that leads to bland, anodyne film. I grew up reading Wizard magazine like a good nerdy child, and it pains me to see that despite my dreams of Marvel and DC becoming big hits, the quality is lost to quantity. It’s almost like capitalism ruins everything? Can’t be that, right?
• Speaking of Adam Smith’s nightmare, do you know how much you’re worth? Americans struggle to understand the basics of finance, and most of us can’t calculate our net worth—it’s usually negative. I’ve seen folks in tech or outside of it miscalculate their imagined riches from stock, pyramid schemes, or NFT/Bitcoin scams and I think a lot of this failure comes from not really understanding basic math and how easy it is to apply that math to your assets and expenses. Wait, does capitalism lead to poor education too? Shit!
• It’s cool, I’m sure the men leading our economy and large companies are interested in fixing the world’s problems and aren’t focused on some kind of Billionaire boss shibboleth like “efficiency”. Wait, I hear a voice in my earpiece saying that’s exactly the opposite of what’s happening. Numbers go up, and when they go up slower billionaires can no longer sexually perform, so they must instead fire and destroy the lives of everyone they have power over. Our planet grows these awful men like a mold, and it’s choking the rest of us. I’m sure this young, hip politician will bring new ideas to the office of the presidency in 2024 that really turns everything around.

In closing

Look, it’s obviously a grim time out there, but it’s not all bad. It’s a sunny day in the Bay Area, I have freshly ground coffee, and my cat spent the morning cuddling with me while I watched tv and read my sites. Later I’m going to cheer on a bunch of fixed-gear cyclists as they do a bike race, and next week I’ll be doing another race of my own. It’s also (as I write this) the birthday of my two favorite Ds: Drl and Drew. Happy birthday to two of the best men I’ve ever known. You rule, and I love you and value our friendship. Keep it up!

My only advice for the rest of you is find people that challenge you, care for you, and stick by you the way you deserve, space cowgirls~