D&F 4/29/24
Happy Birthday Drew! I forget how old he is, but one of the bay’s best dads continues to drop amazing videos and posts, proving blogging isn’t dead. He’s up there with Matt as an primo dad blogger.
My weekend has otherwise been uneventful, with an emotionally draining week behind me, I focused on cycling and cooking some awesome short ribs. Beyond that I watched a few movies and hung out with a friend over drinks. We had a cold spell in the bay, which makes me we want to go camping again soon. I hope my plans to do so can come together.
My next work offsite is mere weeks away, so I plan to spent a lot of time listening to music, reading, and not talking to many folks. I bought a few new records and dubbed tapes this week so I’ll have a load of analog fun this summer.
Links
The best movie I’ve seen recently was Civil War. In addition to being bizarre and vibes-based, it had incredible sound design. If you don’t like Alex Garland, you might not enjoy this, but if Devs, Ex Machina, and Annihilation were your vibe (or even his books), check it out.
To Camus, life is absurdly meaningless. The best way to tackle that absurdity is to face it, accept it, live authentically, and build meaning.
A coworker is leaving work after years of planning and using the FIRE principal to build his savings. I broadly support this, and hope to do similarly, but this essay on FIRE was interesting. I agree with Camus, frankly.
At one of the Lesbians Who Tech conferences I went to in the past, I saw Kara Swisher speak, and was deeply underwhelmed. She seemed to be the epitome of access journalism and weird chumminess with facist tech bros. Nothing really changed about that, but she’s written a book to pretend she always could tell it wasn’t right. I won’t be reading it. Folks like this require a level of courage, honesty, and ethical backbone that few in tech journalism have, and I fear the bay and the US will be ruined by these jokers.
In lighter reading, the Verge’s new laptop reviewer talks about her experience with the Light Phone 2, a singularly strange object that forces her friends and family to completely change how they talk to her:
Texting is still frustrating because of the slow E Ink screen, so now I call my friends more often — on the Light Phone or on video from my computer if they’re abroad. It was also awkward at first explaining to family and friends why I couldn’t immediately check my Instagram when they sent me a funny meme or why I couldn’t see a picture they texted.
Yea, that sounds pretty annoying. I have friends who struggle, as a lot of us do, to find distance and peace in a world of digital too-muchness, but this ‘smart/dumb phone’ seems like a miss. For me, I’ve found long bike rides or books to be the best solution to my desire to idly browse the web. I’m not on any of the big social networks either, which certainly helps. But hey, I’m a weirdo. The connections I maintain through chat (Discord and Slack) are elements of sincere friendships, so they feel worth keeping.
Closing
Two weeks in a row might just mean I’m back on my newsletter game. If the links keep flowing, I’ll keep sending them, and it looks like summer will be a busy news time. From a sunny, chilly bay, I wish you a happy Drew’s Birthday, space cowgirls~