09 - Things Get Personal
FIRST UP: I finally got fed up enough with tinyletter to look elsewhere. I landed on Buttondown, which felt easier to use immediately. I was able to import the archives and the list of you beautiful people seamlessly, so hopefully that’s settled. If you see any weirdness, let me know.
Greetings from the uncharacteristically drenched city of Austin, fleshbags. I’m writing this on the Sunday before my first day at my new job (finally!) I’m still stuck in Search Engine Manipulation, but in a very narrow, technical, “Just fix the fucking website, yo!” sorta way. Basically something I can hold my nose and do. Thus ends the last 3 months of stressing about money, a job, and everything else involved with that.
It’s weird though, as much as I hate how things went down at the old place, it kinda gave me a chance to reboot and redesign myself a bit (which reminds me, I need to update my software versioning to reflect the change). I’m walking in to this new gig without the ginormous chip i carried around on my shoulder throughout the last gig (if i’m honest? The last few gigs), and just sorta feel like I’m starting from a better headspace than I’ve had in a while. If nothing else, my goal is to, as one of my mentors/former bosses said “…at least pretend to give a shit.”
Thanks for indulging my personal moment, dear fleshbags, my henchpersons will save you till last when the revolution comes. And now, on to stuff and things.
Congratulations, you invented the… rolling apartment?
Volvo recently announced a new concept autonomous car, the Volvo 360c . I get the problems they’re claiming to solve (travel between cities overnight, among others). The videos all show pretty people reading a book and sleeping, and great, fine, if it’s only short term, that’s great.
However, we all know if won’t end there. Watching, I couldn’t help but start writing an upcoming Black Mirror episode, wherein most people can’t even afford even basic accommodations, so everyone lives in their cars in a never-ending solar powered rush hour, fighting viciously for rare parking spots or being forced to let your car roam free during the day. Older people stare wistfully off into space when asked what it was like to sleep in, not an ever moving coffin, but a stationary bed.
Ok, I got off track there, but don’t act like that couldn’t happen. More and more people are being forced by rising costs and circumstance to live in their cars already, so this is really just then next logical step.
Well, duh
Yet another study shows that ride sharing services are, in fact, making traffic worse. You mean more people not walking or biking, and then riding singly in vehicles has a negative effect on traffic? I never would have guessed.
You really should read the whole article and/or report(s), but there’s one figure that blew my damn mind: in the 9 cities studied, ridesharing has added 5.7 B I L L I O N (with a B E E) miles of driving to those municipalities roads. Which means added wear and tear on infrastructure, more pollution, added congestion, and so much more.
And, before everyone puts all our eggs in the self driving cars basket, current research shows they’ll only exacerbate the problem, which, when you think about it, makes sense. If it costs Uber less to operate an autonomous car, pricing will lower, meaning even more vehicles constantly clogging the roads.
Look, I get that ride sharing has its use cases, and that it’s probably a genie that can’t be put back in the bottle, but we have to think long term here if we want to survive.
Selfcare Tips for the Burgeoning Supervillain
Gonna keep this short and to the point this issue:
Be kind to yourselves.
Seriously, that’s all I’ve got. When that impulse to call yourself stupid rears its head, when you start to list all the reasons you’re the worst, when nobody gets your stupendously cool Squirrel Girl reference, when you can’t understand why anyone likes, let alone loves, you, when [INSERT ISSUE], try to BE. KIND.
Now, before you scream at your screen, “IT’S NOT THAT EASY, DIPSHIT!”, trust me, I know. I know all to well. My brain defaults to loathing everything i am, do, or say. Those examples up there? Just a few from a near infinite list of occurrences from my own experience. BUT, it doesn’t always have to be that way.
I hate myself less today than I did 6 years ago, and am gaining ground little by little. I have days I can sorta feel OK about myself, and I have days I’m convinced I’m worse than Dahmer, Hitler, and Voldemort combined, and you know what? That’s ok. Not everyday is a good (for your own value of the word) day. But when you’re able, be kind to yourself. Even if it’s in small ways. I started with just calling myself an idiot instead of a stupid fucking idiot. That doesn’t seem like much, but trust me, that was a herculean effort that was well worth the time. And now? I occasionally have days I can think/say I’m pretty damn smart and (mildly) funny.
Remember, you are a fucking dope-ass being (human or otherwise) and don’t let your brain try and bully you otherwise.
Stuffs for Your Brainmeats
Music
War Balloons, Guante & Big Cats
> With a wrench you can build a bridge
>
> With a wrench you can hit a nazi on the bridge of his nose
>
With a wrench you can wedge it in between two gears
And watch the machine explode
from Wrenches
Guante & Big Cats reunite for the first time in almost 6 years, and it is straight. fucking. FIRE. As in, I can’t remember the last time I had to keep pausing an album to a)process a lyric and b) holler to my wife in the other room like “DID YOU HEAR THAT?”. (see above).
Now, Guante’s no stranger to deeply political and forward thinking (dare I say, conscious) hip-hip, but he has seriously leveled up on War Balloons. There is literally a song called Bumbling Shithead Fascists where he compares Trump to a “…jack-o-lantern stuffed to the brim with eels…”, and that’s probably the mildest line in the song.
Look, I can keep copy/pasting lines from the album, or you could just go check it out. And you should. Right now. It is a righteously furious album that can hopefully function as both a wake up call for the sleeping and a battle cry for the already awake.
The Anix
On a shorter and less serious note, my cyberpunk fam will be interested in this interview with The Anix. The Anix is a multi pronged project that includes cyberpunkesque electronic music that I can’t help but dig.
Shutdown Sequence Initiated
Welp, that’s another one in can, fleshbags. Bit transpo heavy this time around, but that’s how it goes. Join me next time, if we’re all still here then. And remember,